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CHAPTER X
11
LITERATURE
N the last chapter we have seen that in the sixth century B.C. there was in India a very considerable amount of literature of a special sort. Hampered as it was by the absence of written books, by the necessity of learning by heart, and of constantly repeating, the treatises in which it was contained, the extent of the literature is evidence of a considerable degree both of intelligence and of earnestness in effort among the people of India in those days. A great deal of it, perhaps the larger portion of it, has absolutely perished. But a considerable part of the results of the literary activity of each of three different schools has survived. It is by a comparison of three sets of documents, each of them looking at things from a different point of view, that we have to reconstruct the history of the time.
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Of these three the surviving books - if books they may be called which had never yet been written - composed and used by those of the brahmins who
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II. THE PALI BOOKS
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
