Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

India to-day acknowledges no higher authority in matters of religion, ceremonial, customs, and law than the Vedas, and the spirit of Vedantism, which is breathed by every Hindu from his earliest youth, pervades the prayers of the idolater, the speculations of the philosopher, and the proverbs of the beggar.

The "Puranas" (ancient writings) hold an eminent rank in the religion and literature of the Hindus. Though of a more recent date than the Vedas, they possess the credit of an ancient and divine origin, and exercise an extensive and practical influence upon the people. They comprise vast collections of ancient traditions relating to theology, cosmology, and to the genealogy of gods and heroes. There are eighteen acknowledged Puranas, which altogether contain 400,000 stanzas. The "Upapuranas," also eighteen in number, are commentaries on the Puranas. Finally, to the sacred books, and next to the Vedas both in antiquity and authority, belong the "Manavadharmasastra," or the ordinances of Manu, spoken of hereafter.

5. SANSKRIT POETRY.—This poetry, springing from the lively and powerful imagination of the Hindus, is inspired by their religious doctrines, and embodied in the most harmonious language. Exalted by their peculiar belief in pantheism and metempsychosis, they consider the universe and themselves as directly emanating from Brahm, and they strive to lose their own individuality, in its infinite essence. Yet, as impure beings, they feel their incapacity to obtain the highest moral perfection, except through a continual atonement, to which all nature is condemned. Hence Hindu poetry expresses a profound melancholy, which pervades the character as well as the literature of that people. This poetry breathes a spirit of perpetual sacrifice of the individual self, as the ideal of human life. The bards of India, inspired by this predominant feeling, have given to poetry nearly every form it has assumed in the Western world, and in each and all they have excelled.

Sanskrit poetry is both metrical and rhythmical, equally free from the confused strains of unmoulded genius and from the servile pedantry of conventional rules. The verse of eight syllables is the source of all other metres, and the sloka or double distich is the stanza most frequently used. Though this poetry presents too often extravagance of ideas, incumbrance of episodes, and monstrosity of images, as a general rule it is endowed with simplicity of style, pure coloring, sublime ideas, rare figures, and chaste epithets. Its exuberance must be attributed to the strange mythology of the Hindus, to the immensity of the fables which constitute the groundwork of their poems, and to the gigantic strength of their poetical imaginations. A striking peculiarity of Sanskrit poetry is its extensive use in treating of those subjects apparently the most difficult to reduce to a metrical form—not only the Vedas and Manu's code are composed in verse, but the sciences are expressed in this form. Even in the few works which may be called prose, the style is so modulated and bears so great a resemblance to the language of poetry as scarcely to be distinguished from it. The history of Sanskrit poetry is, in reality, the history of Sanskrit literature.

The subjects of the epic poems of the Hindus are derived chiefly from their religious tenets, and relate to the incarnations of the gods, who, in their human forms, become the heroes of this poetry. The idea of an Almighty power warring against the spirit of evil destroys the possibility of struggle, and impairs the character of epic poetry; but the Hindu poets, by submitting their gods both to fate and to the condition of men, diminish their power and give them the character of epic heroes.

The Hindu mythology, however, is the great obstacle which must ever prevent this poetry from becoming popular in the Western world. The great personifications of the Deity have not been softened down, as in the mythology of the Greeks, to the perfection of human symmetry, but are here exhibited in their original gigantic forms. Majesty is often expressed by enormous stature; power, by multitudinous hands; providence, by countless eyes; and omnipresence, by innumerable bodies.

In addition to this, Hindu epic poetry departs so far from what may be called the vernacular idiom of thought and feeling, and refers to a people whose political and religious institutions, as well as moral habits, are so much at variance with our own, that no labor or skill could render its associations familiar.

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the most important and sublime creations of Hindu literature, and the most colossal epic poems to be found in the literature of the world. They surpass in magnitude the Iliad and Odyssey, the Jerusalem Delivered and the Lusiad, as the pyramids of Egypt tower above the temples of Greece.

The Ramayana (Rama and yana, expedition) describes the exploits of Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu, and the son of Dasaratha, king of Oude. Ravana, the prince of demons, bad stolen from the gods the privilege of being invulnerable, and had thus acquired an equality with them. He could not be overcome except by a man, and the gods implored Vishnu to become incarnate in order that Ravana might be conquered. The origin and the development of this Avatar, the departing of Rama for the battlefield, the divine signs of his mission, his love and marriage with Sita, the daughter of the king Janaka, the persecution of his step-mother, by which the hero is sent into exile, his penance in the desert, the abduction of his bride by Ravana, the gigantic battles that ensue, the rescue of Sita, and the triumph of Rama constitute the principal plot of this wonderful poem, full of incidents and episodes of the most singular and beautiful character. Among these may be mentioned the descent of the goddess Ganga, which relates to the mythological origin of the river Ganges, and the story of Yajnadatta, a young penitent, who through mistake was killed by Dasaratha; the former splendid for its rich imagery, the latter incomparable for its elegiac character, and for its expression of the passionate sorrow of parental affection.

The Ramayana was written by Valmiki, a poet belonging to an unknown period. It consists of seven cantos, and contains twenty-five thousand verses. The original, with its translation into Italian, was published in Paris by the government of Sardinia about the middle of this century.