Indian Antiquary Vol 04

SR No.: 032496
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 410
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 301

BOOK NOTICES.
SEPTEMBER, 1875.]
word, but his works, the uncertain light of natural phænomena. As the world grew older, the everlasting problem of life and death; the riddle of riches and poverty, youth and old age; the toss-up of sickness or health, good or evil luck; the nice questions of so-called virtue and so-reputed vice, forced themselves on the notice of thinking minds, and, as they worked on in unceasing, relentless round, induced that system of introspection which men call philosophy; and about 600 B. c. the great Philosophic Age began to dawn, ushered in by such master-minds as Zoroaster, Confucius, the wise men of Greece, and the wise men of India. In that birth came into existence the six schools of Indian Philosophy (p. 49).
Nothing is more striking, as Professor Williams shows, than the existence of such divergence of opinion in one apparently rigid framework (pp. 53, 61-70). Brahmanism and Rationalism, under the semblance of orthodoxy, advanced hand in hand new ideas were conceived, expanded, blossomed, and in the case of Buddhism were extinguished forcibly by the secular power: and here the author incidentally notes (p. 5) the singular phænomenon that the Turanian nations have adopt ed Buddhism, a faith of Aryan parentage, while the Aryan have surrendered themselves to Semitic dogmas.
To the casual reader the chapter on the Vedas. is full of interest. To it follows an account of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, and of the systems of philosophy: the account of the Jains (p. 127) and of the Bhagavad-gitá (p. 136) have a strange fascination, and help to keep up the interest after four lectures on the Smriti, Smárta-sútra, and law-books, until we reach the epics, and proceed onward to the grand classical age of Sanskrit
literature.
Professor Williams enters into the details of the great epics, the Rámáyana (p. 337) and Mahdbharata (p. 371), and devotes one chapter to a comparison of them with the Homeric poems (p. 415): he adds a choice selection of their religious and moral sentiments (p. 440), as the best test of the degree of moral perception at which their compilers, and those who hang rapturously on their recitation in the vernacular, had arrived: some of these we may quote in later pages.
We have now reached those portions of the literature which may be called comparatively modern; they consist of I. the artificial poems (p. 449), II. the dramas (p. 462), III. the Puránas and Tantras (p. 489), IV. the moral poems and fables (p. 505). The former class comprise some noble poems which illustrate both the beauty and the defects of the Sanskrit language and the Hindu authors, the meaningless play of words, the fanci
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ful conceits, the 'linked sweetness long drawn out, the idea spun out to the finest thread, the intricate grammatical forms, the exceptionable chain of words. In these particulars no poem in any language can compete as regards singularity, charm of originality, and highly wrought finish with the Raghuvansa (p. 455), Meghdduta, and others. Many a Sanskritist who can read the epics, or the laws of Manu, with facility, will find a deeper study necessary to open the locks of a poem whose every éloka presents a separate puzzle: and yet the grand sonorous lines echo through the gallery of time with a rythmical vibration which can never be forgotten. Even the great Homeric hexameters read tamely by the side of the Indravajra lines of Kalidasa, whose exuberant genius runs riot in the unlimited use of melodious homophones.
The dramas are too well known to require further notice we pass on to the Puránas, which are practically the proper Vedas of popular Hinduism. They are modern in date, very numerous, and of varying popularity. They are designed to convey the exoteric doctrine of the Veda to the lower castes and to women. The compilers of them fell into the pitfall of pretending to teach "nearly every subject of knowledge," "to give the history of the whole universe from the remotest ages, and claim to be the inspired revealers of scientific as well as theological truth;" but in fact they are a cross betwixt the Papal Syllabus and the Penny Cyclopædia, and are justly charged with "very questionable omniscience" (p. 490).
We rise from a study of this book with a senso of the great service rendered to the student and the general scholar by the bringing together for the first time in a readily accessible form the corpus of "Indian Wisdom." Those only who commenced the study of Sanskrit thirty or forty years ago can fully appreciate the value and assistance of such a volume. At that period no one could say with certainty what were the boundaries of Sanskrit literature. The last thirty years haye indeed been of wondrous expansion-a gathering in of a rich Indian harvest into European granaries. French, German, English, Italians, natives of India, Danes, and citizens of the United States have all contributed to the great work; and now in this his latest work Professor Monier Williams gives us a conspectus of the whole subject-a mine of reference, and a vade-mecum for future scholars. It is a real subject of gratification that the English school of Sanskritists still maintains the ancient fame acquired in the heroic age by the grand Hindu triad, Jones, Colebrooke, and H. H. Wilson, to whom the proud title of "Primi in Indis" is cheerfully conceded by all European scholars. London, June 1875. J. G.