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353
DECEMBER, 1899.]
IN MEMORIAM GEORGE BÜHLER.
chronological limits which I suggested for this interregnum were from 100 B. C. to 300 A. D. These limits may seem too narrow on either side to some scholars, but I believe I am not overstating my case if I say that at present it is generally admitted that what we call the Laws of Manu are subsequent to the Sámayáchárika or Dharma-sûtras, and that Kâlidâsa's poetical activity belongs to the sixth, nay, if Professor Kielhorn is right, even to the end of the fifth century p. Ch., and that all other Sanskrit poems which we possess are still later. Bühler's brilliant discovery consisted in proving, not that any of the literary works which we possess could be referred to a pre-Gupta date, but that specimens of ornate poetry occurred again and again in pre-Gupta inscriptions, and, what is even more important, that the peculiar character of those monumental poems presupposed on the part of their authors, provincial or otherwise an acquaintance, if not with the Alaskara Sûtras which we possess, at all events with some of their prominent rules. In this way the absence or non-preservation of all greater literary compositions that could be claimed for the period from 100 B. C. to 300 A. D. became even more strongly accentuated by Bühler's discoveries. It might be said, of course, that India is a large country, and that literature might have been absent in one part of the Indian Peninsula and yet flourishing in another; just as even in the small peninsula of Greece, literary culture had its heyday at Athens while it was withering away in Lacedaemon. But these are mere possibilities, and outside the sphere of historical science. There may have been ever so many Kalidasas between 100 B. C. to 300 A. D., but illacrimabile premuntum nocte. The question is, why were literary works preserved, after the rise of the national Gupta dynasty, in the only ways in which at that time they could be preserved in India, either by memory or by the multiplication of copies, chiefly in Royal Libraries under the patronage of Rajahs, whether of Indian or alien origin and why is there at present, as far as manuscripts are concerned, an almost complete literary blank from the end of the Vedic literature to the beginning of the fourth century A. D.?
The important fact which is admitted by Bühler, and was urged by myself, is this - that whatever literary compositions may have existed before 300 A. D., in poetry or even in prose, nothing remains of them at present, and that there must surely be a reason for it. Here it was Bühler who, in the Transactions of the Vienna Academy, 1890, came to my help, drawing my attention to the important fact that among certain recently published ancient inscriptions, eighteen of which are dateable, two only can with any probability be proved to be anterior of what I called the four blank centuries between 100 B. C. to 300 A. D. (See India, p. 353). There occar verses which prove quite clearly that the ornate style of Sanskrit poetry was by no means unknown in earlier times. The as yet undeveloped germs of that ornate poetry may even go back much further, and may be traced in portions of the Brahmanas and in some Buddhistic writings; but their full development at the time of these Sanskrit inscriptions was clearly established for the first time by Bühler's valuable remarks. So far we were quite agreed, nor do I know of any arguments that have been advanced against Bühler's historical views. There may be difference of opinion as to the exact dates of the Sanskrit Girnar inscription of Rudradâman and the Prakrit Nasik inscription of Pulumâyi, but they contain at all events sufficient indications that an ornate, though perhaps less elaborate style of poetry, not far removed from the epic style, prevailed in India during the second century A. D. All the evidence accessible on that point has been carefully collected by my friend, and reflects the greatest credit on his familiarity with Sauskrit Alamkára poetry. But the fact remains all the same that nothing was preserved of that poetry before 300 A. D.; and that of what we actually possess of Sanskrit Kavya literature, nothing can for the present be traced back much beyond 500 A. D. We must hope that the time may soon come when the original component parts of the ancient epic poetry, nay, even the philosophical Darśanas, may be traced back with certainty to times before the Indo-Scythian Invasion, It is well known that the Mahabharata and the Purdnas are mentioned by name during the Sutra period, and we cannot be far wrong in supposing that something like what we possess now of these works must have existed then.
