A HISTORY OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE
The Indian student generally finds it difficult to keep abreast of the progress made in the study of Sanskrit in the West as he knows little of French and German, the two languages in which that progress is mostly recorded. For this reason, he is sure to welcome the appearance of a book in English like the one under review 1 which is quite up-to-date and places the whole harvest, as it were, before him. Its up-to-date and comprehensive character will be well indicated when we mention that even the few addit- ions made to our knowledge of the subject during the time the book was in the press have been noticed at length in the preface. But the work is not a mere compilation of the results of others’ investigation. It does indeed summarise them, but it also critically reviews them and has independent opinions to offer on many a topic discussed. Like the other books of the author, the present one also abounds in useful facts ; and as for the views expressed in it, we had already a foretaste of them in his shorter work — Classical Sanskrit Literature — published a few years ago in the Heritage of India series, but naturally they appear here considerably amplified.
The book is divided into three Parts of which the first treats of the language in which is written the literature whose account is to follow in the two remaining Parts. The need for this preliminary essay arises from the fact that there is a difference of opinion among scholars in regard to the vehicle of early secular literature in India as distinguished from the Vedic. Some have held that it was at first entirely in Prakrit. On this theory, works like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata which go back to that early period were originally in Prakrit and were afterwards turned into Sanskrit as that language gained in influence and came to replace Prakrit as the means of literary expression. The theory is finally refuted here, the evidence adduced in that behalf being of overwhelming weight. The several Prakrits, as vernaculars, have no doubt been used all along for popular literature; but it is equally certain that Sanskrit also has throughout served as the medium for expressing
1 A History of Sanskrit Literature . A. Berriedale Keith, D.C.L., D.Litt. Clarendon Press, Oxford , 1928.
