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BUDDHIST INDIA
sorts of public spectacles, and one of these is the reciting of such Akhyānas. And when the commentator in the early part of the fifth century A.D. explains this as the reciting of the Bhārata, the Rāmāyaṇa, and so on, that is, as exegesis, perfectly right. This was the sort of thing referred to. But his remark is evidence of the existence of the perfect Epics, only at his own time, not at the time of the old text he is explaining.
This may seem, I am afraid, to have been a digression. But it is really very inuch to the purpose, when discussing Indian literature in this period, to bring out the importance of the wide prevalence of the versifying faculty, and to discuss the stage to which it had reached, the style of composition in which it was mostly used. We hear of four kinds of poets :the poet of imagination (who makes original verses): the poet of tradition (the repeater of current verses); the poet of real life (or perhaps of worldly as distinct from religious topics); and the improvis. atore. We have several instances in the books of such impromptu verses. Though they were probably not quite so impromptu as they are described to be, we need not doubt the fact that the art was then a recognised form of ability. And when a man is charged with being “ drunk with poesy": (kiiveyyamatto) the rapt and far-away look of the poet in the moment of inspiration cannot have been altogether unfainiliar.
It is interesting to notice that, just as we have evidence at this period of the first steps having been
'Anguttara, 2, 23o ; compare Sum. 95. ? Samyutta, 1. 110.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
