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cient times. They contain many graphic passages which, for beauty of description, cannot be surpassed by anything in Homer. Their diction is more polished, regular, and cultivated, and the language altogether shows a more advanced stage of development than that of Homer. In the description of scenery they are more graphic and picturesque than anything in either Greek or Latin poetry. The civilization which they indicate is of a higher degree than that represented in the Homeric poems, and the luxury and refinement described are far greater than those of Sparta and Troy. Rama's character presents the type of a perfect husband, son, and brother. His wife (Sita) appears greatly superior to the Greek Helen and even to Penelope. Other characters in the Indian poems are models of fraternal duty, of maternal tenderness, of paternal love. The whole moral tone of the Ramayana is above that of the Iliad. Both the Hindu epics rise above the Homeric poems in the fact that a deep religious feeling appears to underlie the story everywhere, and even the wildest allegory conceals a sublime moral, symbolizing the conflict between good and evil and teaching the necessity of purity of soul, self-sacrifice, and a subjugation of all passion.

A conspicuous fact of the Indian poems in contrast with the Homeric is the recognition given to a mediatorial priestly caste. They are the work of Brahmanism not less than of poetic imagination. The priest, or Brahman, boldly claims a monopoly of all knowledge, human and divine, and everywhere uses the poetic element to impress the lesson of caste. The Hindu appetite for exaggeration is encouraged by the Brahman poets to the last degree; even the geographical, chronological and historical details rarely show assertions which can be trusted; and India contrasts with Europe in nothing more than in the fact that the wildest fictions of the epic poems are to this very day religiously accepted by the great mass of the Hindus, and are closely interwoven with present faith.

In their pictures of domestic life and manners the Hindu epics are even more true and real than the Greek and Roman. The delineation of women keeps close to nature. There are delightful representations of the purity and simplicity of Hindu domestic manners in early times, show

ing Hindu wives as perfect patterns of conjugal fidelity. Various passages indicate that women were subjected to less social restraint than now; that they, in fact, enjoyed considerable liberty; that, in many instances, female character showed dignity and elevation; and that great mutual affection prevailed in families. Nothing can be more beautiful and touching than the pictures of domestic and social happiness. The scenes of domestic affection and the expression of those universal feelings and emotions. which belong to human nature, in all time and in all places, surpass anything found. in the Greek epics. Many passages give a very high idea of great purity and happiness in domestic life, and of a capacity in Hindu women for the discharge of the most sacred and important social duties.

Sir Monier Monier-Williams, whose
views the above statements express, gives
illustrative passages from the great epics,
from which we select the following:
Where'er we walk, Death marches at our side;
Where'er we sit, Death seats himself beside us;
However far we journey, Death continues
Our fellow-traveler and goes with us home.
Men take delight in each returning dawn,
And, with admiring gaze, behold the glow
Of sunset. Every season, as it comes,
Fills them with gladness, yet they never reck
That each recurring season, every day,
Fragment by fragment bears their life away.

Thou thinkest: I am single and alone-
Perceiving not the great eternal Sage
Who dwells within thy breast. Whatever wrong
Is done by thee, he sees and notes it all.

An evil-minded man is quick to see
His neighbor's faults, though small as mustard-
seed;

But when he turns his eyes toward his own,
Though large as bilva fruit, he none descries.

Conquer a man who never gives by gifts;
Subdue untruthful men by truthfulness;
Vanquish an angry man by gentleness;
And overcome the evil man by goodness.
To injure none by thought, or word, or deed,
To give to others, and be kind to all-
This is the constant duty of the good.
High-minded men delight in doing good,
Without a thought of their own interest;
When they confer a benefit on others,
They reckon not on favors in return.

Bear railing words with patience; never meet
An angry man with anger, nor return
Reviling for reviling; smite not him
Who smites thee; let thy speech and acts be
gentle.

Do naught to others which, if done to thee,
Would cause thee pain; this is the sum of duty.
How can a man love knowledge, yet repose?

Would'st thou be learned?-then abandon ease.
Either give up thy knowledge or thy rest.
Do good to-day; time passes, Death is near.
Death falls upon a man all unawares,
Like a ferocious wolf upon a sheep.

Death comes when his approach is least expected.

Death sometimes seizes ere the work of life
Is finished, or its purposes accomplished.
Death carries off the weak and strong alike,
The brave and timorous, the wise and foolish,
And those whose objects are not yet achieved.
Therefore, delay not; Death may come to-day.
Death will not wait to know if thou art ready,
Or if thy work be done. Be active now,
While thou art young, and time is still thine own.
This very day perform to-morrow's work,
This very morning do thy evening's task.
When duty is discharged, then, if thou live,
Honor and happiness will be thy lot,
And if thou die, supreme beatitude.

This is the sum of all true righteousness-
Treat others as thou would'st thyself be treated.
Do nothing to thy neighbor which hereafter
Thou would'st not have thy neighbor do to thee.
In causing pleasure, or in giving pain,
In doing good or injury to others,
In granting or refusing a request,
A man obtains a proper rule of action
By looking on his neighbor as himself.
Other Poetry

There should be menof India tioned in connection with the epic poems two classes of productions which depart somewhat from the strictly religious traditions of Hinduism and belong to the field of universal poetry. One of these is a large class of highly artificial poems, six of which, by four authors, are especially designated "great poems great, however, not in length, but in topic and treatment. Three of these are by Kalidasa, who figures also in the dramatic field as the Shakespeare of Hinduism. The other authors of "great poems" are Bharavi, Magha, and Sri-Harsha. This Sri-Harsha, who lived about the year 1000 A. D., enjoys the distinction of being the greatest of all Hindu skeptical philosophers. The great poems of Kalidasa abound in truly poetical ideas and display great fertility of imagination and power of description. He is the greatest of Indian poets, and even in him, much more in others, there is a tendency to artificial diction, not acceptable to European critical taste.

One of these poets said:

Two only sources of success are known-
Wisdom and effort; make them both thine own
If thou would'st rise and haply gain a throne.
A good man's intellect is piercing, yet
Inflicts no wound; his actions are deliberate,
Yet bold; his heart is warm, but never burns;
His speech is eloquent, yet ever true.

The Hindu

The dramas of India Drama ante-date our own by nearly fifteen centuries, some of them going back to about the first or second century of our era. Although of Oriental cast, they have undoubted literary value as repositories of much true poetry. The germ of dramatic representation, with the Hindus as with the Greeks, was in public exhibitions of dancing. To the dancing were added pantomimic gesticulations with elaborate musical performances. Then these were helped out by occasional exclamations. There came next natural language, taking the place of music and singing, and making dramatic dialogue.

The origin of actual dramatic writing is lost in remote antiquity. There is evidence that plays were acted in India at least as early as the reign of Asoka, in the third century B. C., very much as plays were acted not long before Shakespeare in the sixteenth century A. D. The earliest extant Hindu drama-the 'Claycart"-belongs in the first or second century of our era. Yet, in plot, incidents, characters, diction, stage business and stage method, it may be compared with

the modern drama.

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The Hindu plays, however, are never tragedies. Hindu thought looks upon no occurrence in human life as really tragic, evil and suffering having resulted through a law of consequences from a former existence, with hope of deliverance here, which it was easy for the dramatist to use in concluding his "tragedy" happily.

A great sage (Bharata) who is regarded constantly quoted as the original authoralso as the author of a system of music, is ity for dramatic composition. The Sutras, or rules, said to have been devised by him, were followed by various treatises on dramatic writing. These divide drama into two great classes: (1) "principal dramas,' of which there are ten kinds, and (2)

"minor dramas," of which there are eighteen kinds. Early play-acting in India, unlike that of England, was before an audience "consisting chiefly of men of education and discernment." Literature was, in fact, reserved for the privileged castes.

The prologue to every play commences with an invocation to the favorite deity of the poet on behalf of the audience. It may be remarked here that scarcely a single work in Sanscrit literature is commenced without a prayer. The charac

ters of a Hindu play were divided into three classes-the inferior, the middling, and the superior. These last were expected to speak Sanscrit with accent and expression. The earliest known Hindu drama-the "Clay-cart"-is an interesting drama, with passages which would do credit to the modern theater.

The greatest of all Indian dramatists, Kalidasa, lived and composed his works about the commencement of the third century A. D. He only wrote three plays. The Sakuntala, the most celebrated of these, is of almost unequalled poetical beauty. It displays marvelous powers of describing the beauties of nature and the habits of animals in rural and sylvan retreats.

The Eighteen

IX.

The eighteen Puranas, Puranas which succeed, in the evolution of Hindu literature, to the two great epic poems, are in large part drawn from these poems. Their name signifies "old traditional story," and their purpose is to tell over the stories of the gods in such a way as to convey the doctrines of developed Hinduism to the lower castes and to women. The Maha-bharata, as a vast cyclopædia of Hindu mythology, legendary history, ethics and philosophy, was fabled to have been composed with the benevolent purpose of bringing divinely revealed knowledge, or Veda, down to the level of women and of the lower caste, or Sudras. Its 220,ooo lines are divided into eighteen parvans, or sections, as we have already seen, and it is said that the eighteen Puranas were prepared to further carry out the purpose of the eighteen parvans of the great poem. The Puranas are sometimes said to constitute a fifth Veda, and for instruction of the masses in the later Brahminical doctrines, they are the Veda of popular Hinduism. They show in rivalry the two systems of Vishnuism and Sivaism. Particular Puranas were devoted to the exaltation of the one god or of the other, with not a little strife of sects or schools, which has in our day given way to the broad and tolerant belief that various names are mere symbols for different manifestations of the one Supreme Being.

Following the eighteen Puranas there are eighteen Upa-puranas or sub-Puranas,

which merely go over the teaching again, by way of summary or repetition.

The

Tantras

A numerous class of writings attached to the Puranas, and taking the place of them, are the Tantras. They are for Sakti-worship. The chief Hindu deities are represented in two characters; one inactive, the other active. The active side of the god is called his Sakti. It is sometimes personified as his wife. It represents the active, energizing will. In the later stages of Hinduism, the Sakti, or wife of the god Siva, was conceived as presiding over destruction or dissolution, and the Sakti-worship of Sivaism became the chief thing to a great mass of worshipers whose religion was rooted in fear. The Tantras were provided for this form of Sakti-worship. They are generally in the form of dialogues between Siva and his wife, she inquiring and he instructing as to ceremonies, spells, charms, magical formularies, etc.

Ethical

Instruction

X.

A final form of Sanscrit literature, which exhausts and closes its vast development, is that of ethical and didactic writings of many kinds, called the Niti-sastras. Their direct object is moral teaching. The didactic portions of the epic poems and other works belong under this head. Two forms of Niti-sastras exist; (1) collections of choice maxims, striking thoughts and wise sentiments in the form of metrical stanzas, and (2) books of fables in prose, bringing together stories about animals, and amusing apologues for the sake of their moral, or to introduce metrical precepts.

A moral tone everywhere pervades the best Hindu writings. A constant longing for niti, or guidance and instruction. in practical wisdom, is catered to in nearly all departments of Sanscrit literature. The Niti-sastras are especially designed to meet this longing. They contain striking thoughts on the nature of God and the immortality of the soul, with much sound ethical teaching in regard to the various relations and conditions of society. They are really mines of practical good sense. The knowledge of human nature displayed by the authors, the shrewd advice they give, the censure they pass on human frailties, attest wis

dom, the practice of which would raise any people high among the nations of the earth.

The collection of fables and apologues which come under the head of Niti-sastras, form a class of compositions in which the natives of India are wholly unsurpassed. They are the original source of all the well-known fables current in Europe and Asia for more than 2,000 years, since the days of Herodotus.

There are other collections of tales and works of fiction which are not properly Niti-sastras, but are a suggestion of the modern novel.

Learning by

The greatest of English Memory Only scholars in the story of India-Prof. Max Müller, of Oxfordraises the question how the Vedic literature could have been composed and preserved when writing was unknown in India before 500 B. C., while the hymns of the oldest Veda are said to date from 1500 B. C. "As a matter of fact," he says, "writing was known in India as early as the date mentioned for commercial purposes only. For the purpose of inscriptions on monuments it was unknown before the third century B. C. The Greek reporters, about the time of Alexander the Great, said that the laws in India were not written, and that they administered justice from memory; and yet, although writing for literary purposes was unknown, the Vedic literature, beginning from a thousand to fifteen hundred years before Christ, and proceeding through great periods of development, was produced and handed down."

In the Rig-veda alone, containing ten books of hymns, in which there were 1,017 poems, 10,080 verses, and about 153,826 words, there is a fragment only of a great literature, the whole of which was produced before writing had come into use. These earliest poems are composed in very perfect metre; and, after having been composed, they were handed down from 1500 before Christ to 1500 after Christ-a period of 3,000 years-without the use of manuscripts. It was done entirely by memory, and even at the present moment a great Vedic scholar will have learned the whole of the Vedic Bible by heart, not only the earliest texts, but the successive developments of commentary and explanation and supplement to an extent almost incredible.

The grammar of Sanscrit produced by Panini, in 3,996 sections, stands, as we have already seen, almost at the head of the grammatical literature of mankind. There is no indication in it that writing had taken the place of memory as an aid to production and to handing down a literay product. Hindu belief was that Panini saw rather than composed his grammar, or, we should perhaps say, heard it uttered by a divine voice.

This was the Hindu theory in regard to all Vedic productions. The four original books of hymns had been heard by the various authors of the poems and had been repeated to the ears of men from memory. Whoever had studied in Vedic scripture had employed memory only, first hearing the teacher repeat and then himself repeating, until he had the whole by heart. The Brahmanas, which were a very large body of commentaries, were produced and handed down in the same way; and so on through a long development of the canon of Vedic productions down to a very late period. Stage on stage of literary evolution passed, generations of scholars succeeded each other, and the whole stream of literature flowed on through the memories alone of men.

It is said that children would learn the whole of Panini's grammar in about eight months. Even when manuscripts came into existence, they were not made a dependence; students were not allowed to use them, but had to learn the sacred writings by heart, as they were uttered to the ear by a teacher who knew them by heart. In the later law-books of Hinduism severe punishments are threatened against persons who copy the Veda or learn it from a manuscript. The art of teaching had been perfected at least five hundred years B. C., without the slightest trace of the existence of anything like a book, paper, pen or ink, and with no expression in any Vedic works pointing to any other literature than that which was carried in the memory of men.

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the Veda had been uttered. The form of religious thought and observance which lies lowest in respect of intellect and moral elevation, is that of intense consciousness of the spirits of the dead, leading to anxious observances directed to the two ends of giving the dead due care, care especially by means of food and drink, and of guarding against injury which it is universally believed the dead can inflict, and are not unlikely to inflict.

In this earliest and lowliest form of human faith, spirits, whether the gods, or the spirits of departed men, are believed to need service precisely the same as the living. Over the whole vast Oriental world, including, with India, China, Japan and other parts of the east and north of Asia, there has persisted from a past far beyond anything to which the oldest records go back, and through untold ages down to the present time, full faith in this relation of spirits in the invisible world to human beings and the visible means of human life on the earth. No matter what developments of higher religion have appeared; no matter what philosophies have turned the searching powers of the human mind toward the infinite and the absolute above and beyond man; no matter what profound perceptions of duty and lofty anticipations. of destiny have found utterance and acceptance on the widest scale; and no matter what masterly and marvelous developments of literature of many kinds have been made; there has yet never failed, like a tide coming in over a seamarsh, the universal rise and dominance of the primitive faith in spirits, whether of deities or of the dead, impelling to the observances which are the oldest and the most universal religious practices of mankind.

Brahmanism, however broadly and nobly built, in its philosophies, its ethics and its humanities, has yet never drawn the mass of the Hindus out of the reach of the submerging tides of spiritism. Buddhism, which was, in its founders and in its earlier developments, a magnificent departure from Brahmanism in the direction of mountain heights of intellectual conception and moral appeal, sank, in the hands of the vast mass of those who became its disciples, to the lowest levels of ignorant and superstitious spiritism. It ceased to have a place in

India because, in its true character, the Hindus were easily persuaded by a crafty Brahmanism to have nothing to do with so elevated a form of religion. In the lands which gave it permanent welcome, such as Thibet and China, there passed over it universally a degradation from the masses of the people which completely submerged it under the most crude spiritist teachings and practices.

To no small extent the religion of the Veda in India, with all its marvelous developments, was deliberately used, and has been so used down to our time, for darkness and degradation everywhere among the mass of the people, in order that a Brahman priesthood may the more easily and completely retain absolute mastery, not only of the course of religious culture, but of all the economies of human society. The two great ideas of a Vedic bible, and a Brahman caste commissioned to control Vedic religion, operated, as such ideas have everywhere and always operated, not only against intellectual and moral advance, but for an enslavement of the common mind, not to say of all minds, the disaster of which was in the highest degree deplorable.

What the course of things in India might have been subsequent to the career of Buddha, to the coming of Greek culture, and to the spread thither of Christian light, if for a long course of ages slaughtering invaders had not wreaked their brutal fury on immense populations and splendid cities, it is impossible now to tell. Had India been strong enough for self-defense against invasion, and energetic enough for conquests of barbarism beyond her borders, Asia might have been, long before Europe, a continent of intellectual enlightenment and moral elevation, of government and liberty, of many sciences and every form of pure culture, and of peoples at once secure in their strength and happy in their prosperity; but fates of unspeakable terror and unsurpassed calamity fell on her through invading hordes of energetic barbarians, who only knew to devastate, to destroy and to degrade. Again and again the flower of Indian people were a bloodsacrifice to what seemed the insatiable anger of hostile deities.

Again and again the lowliest of the people alone remained to build up the waste places, to kindle new lights of hope where a terror of darkness had been, and

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