पृष्ठम्:Sanskrit Literature.djvu/१०२

70 AÇVAGHOŞA AND EARLY BUDDHIST KĀVYA a god is invoked, a curse is pronounced, a benediction uttered, a prayer put up, in short at any point where emotion is let free and the pedestrian prose is inadequate as an expression of the feeling. He has found proofs of the existence of literature of this kind in the Rgveda, the Brāhmaṇas, the epic, and in Pāli texts, including the Jatakas. In principle the verses alone were preserved in fixed form, and they only received skill and care, the prose being supplied by those who told the tales. The pro- cess of development which followed was, on the one hand, the elimination of the prose by substituting verse, and it has been suggested that a remnant of the old condition is to be found in the Mahabharata, where the speakers in case of dialogue are given in prose, while in the more finished Rāmāyaṇa such devices are unknown, the poet, like the authors of the Iliad and Odyssey, working into verse the name of the spokesman. On the other hand, the step was taken of applying to the prose the artistic polish which marked the verse, and Oldenberg ¹ claims that, apart from an exceptional case like the Kuṇāla Fataka of the Pāli Jataka book, where the verses are accompanied by an ornate prose, the Fātakamālā and the Pañcatantra or Tantra- khyāyika are among the earliest examples of this form. It seems clear for reasons elsewhere adduced that the theory is not substantiated by Vedic evidence, and that it must stand or fall according as other considerations may appear to render it credible. The evidence of comparative literature is still quite inadequate to support it, and from the Indian point of view matters can much more simply be explained. The earliest form of prose with verse intermingled which we find in Indian litera- ture appears to be that in which gnomic verse is cited to illustrate ¹ Allind. Prosa, pp. 82 ff. What is true is that elaboration of prose style is later tban and based on development of verse; cf. Jacobi, Compositum und Nebensatz, p. 93, who cites the symmetrical Varnakas of the Jain canon and their long com- pounds (cf. IS. xvii. 389 ff.). 2 Keith, JRAS. 1911, pp. 979 ff.; 1912, pp. 429 ff.; HOS. xxv. 43 ff. There are cases of intermixture of prose and verse in other languages, e. g. Latin (Varro's Saturae Menippeae, Petronius, Martianus Capella (c. A. D. 400), Boethius (480-524),` and two novels, Julius Valerius (c. 300) and Historia Apolloni Tyrii; Teuffel- Schwabe, Rom Lit., §§ 28, 165, 305, 399, 452, 478, and 489); Norse; Mediaeval Irish (Windisch, Irische Texte, ii. 447 ff.); Chinese; Old Picard, Aucassin et Nico- lett; Boccaccio's L'Ameto; Sa'di's Gulistan; Basutos and Eskimos (MacCulloch, Childhood of Fiction, pp. 480 ff.); Gray, Vasavadattă, p. 32.