Literature—South Asia, Sanskrit

Although almost entirely unknown to the average Western reader, the corpus of literary texts composed in Sanskrit constitutes one of the oldest continuing and most copious literary traditions in the world. The complete body of Sanskrit texts is of a size unparalleled, until modern times, by literature in any language except Chinese. It includes, in the broadest possible definition of "literature," all of the religious, philosophical, legal, historical, medical, inscriptional, technical, and scientific texts associated with the intellectual, theological, and political elites of South and Southeast Asia, from its beginnings in the middle of the second millennium BCE, through its period of greatest efflorescence in the sixth to thirteenth centuries, to the present. This corpus contains such relatively well-known works as the Bhagavad Gita, the Kama Sutra, the great Sanskrit epic poems the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the laws of Manu, the Buddhist Lotus Sutra, and many individual works of immense size, such as the Puranas.

This entry concerns the compositions in poetry and prose that the Sanskritic tradition generally refers to generically as kavya or sahitya, writings in which the formal elements and the aesthetic response of the audience are as important as their content. This corpus is ancient, large, and still alive to some extent. It includes various genres in prose and verse, ranging from collections of short, pithy verses, or subhashitas, on a wide range of subjects, to lengthy narrative poems on epic, romantic, and religious themes, and a large body of plays ranging from short, one-act comic pieces to lengthy emotionally wrought dramas on various themes.

From a Western viewpoint the history of Sanskrit literature can be traced back to the earliest-known compositions in the language, the hymns of the Rig Veda, which date from perhaps the middle of the second century BCE. Some of these hymns, particularly those invoking deities associated with phenomena of nature such as the dawn, the sun, or fire, are among the finest examples of religious poetry in any language. Some of the dialogue hymns and those that narrate stories have been associated by scholars with the origins of drama and the copious story collections for which Sanskrit literature is justly famous.

In the traditional Indian view, however, the Vedas, although regarded with an unparalleled reverence, are not primarily literary texts. For the majority of traditional Indian literary scholars and audiences the origin of poetry is traced to the divine inspiration of the legendary poet-seer Valmiki, who, in the wake of an intense emotional experience, composed his famous epic narrative poem the Ramayana in perhaps the fifth century BCE. The Ramayana is thus often regarded as the first true poem.

The corpus of Sanskrit literary texts begins to build in the first centuries BCE. Among the earliest are the two surviving narrative poems of the Buddhist poet Asvaghosa (flourished first–second century CE), the Buddhacarita, a poetic biography of the historical Buddha, and the Saundarananda, an account of the conversion of a prince to Buddhism, and a collection of dramas on themes drawn from Sanskrit epics and other sources attributed to the playwright Bhasa. Highly styled poetic composition is also found in Sanskrit royal inscriptions from the first centuries CE.

One of the earliest (although of uncertain date) poets of the efflorescence of Sanskrit literature, and by more or less general consensus the single greatest literary master of the Sanskrit language, is the poet and playwright Kalidasa, who is often associated with the imperial court of the Guptas, perhaps around the fifth century CE. This artist, sometimes known in modern times as "the Shakespeare of India," left four major poetic works and three dramas. Of the former, two, the Raghuvamsa and the Kumarasambhava, are considered masterpieces of the genre known as mahakavya or "great poems," long, multicanto narrative poems based on themes drawn from the epics and the Puranas. The first of these is a poetic rendering of the history of the great dynasts of the Raghu dynasty, including a retelling of the career of its most illustrious son, Rama. The second is an account of the courtship and marriage of the great divinity Siva and his wife, the goddess Uma or Parvati. A third piece, the Meghaduta or "Cloud Messenger," is an example of a shorter genre (khandakavya) composed in a single poetic meter; it consists of the romantic message of a lovelorn demigod to his distant wife, which he imparts to a passing cloud. This piece is among the most imitated works of Sanskrit poetry and has inspired a whole subgenre of messenger poetry.

The dramas of Kalidasa are equally highly esteemed; one of them, Shakuntala, is often considered by Indian and Western critics alike to be perhaps the finest single work of the Sanskrit literary canon. This romantic play, based on an episode in the Mahabharata, captured the imagination of poets and scholars in late-eighteenth-century Europe and was showered with praise in a famous verse by Goethe in 1792.

Perhaps because of the genius, prolific production, and exalted reputation of Kalidasa, the genres he favored acquired considerable prestige in succeeding centuries. Thus the mahakavya form finds numerous exponents, some of whom established it as a major genre between the sixth and eighth centuries.

Drama, too, particularly the longer subgenres of multiact plays based on epics and invented themes, was further developed by early masters such as Bhatta Narayana (the Venisamhara), Shriharsha (the Ratnavali), and above all Bhavabhuti (the Mahaviracarita, the Uttararamacarita, and the Malatimadhava) during roughly the same period. Noteworthy also among the older dramas is a charming romance, the Mrichchakatika or "Little Clay Cart," attributed to a king Shudraka, whose date is a matter of continuing scholarly debate.

Along with the development of these verse forms (the dramas are largely verse interspersed with prose dialogue), early authors set high standards for the development of prose kavya in the form of lengthy narrative romances. Noteworthy here are the Dashakumaracarita (Adventures of the Ten Princes), by the writer and literary critic Dandin; the Vasavadatta of Subandhu; the historical prose poem the Harshacarita; and the romance the Kadambari of Banabhatta.

The genres, periods, and authors of Sanskrit literature are far too numerous to summarize completely here. One important genre was the narrative tale and fable literature, which was highly developed in India and which traveled widely throughout Europe and Asia from this point of origin. Noteworthy works include the Pancatantra, a collection of moral beast fables; the riddling stories of the Vetalapancavimshati; and the great Kathasaritsagara (Ocean of Stories), by the eleventh-century Kashmiri poet Somadeva.

Although Sanskrit literature reached what was perhaps its pinnacle by the twelfth century CE, it by no means ended then. Poets and storytellers in many genres continued to compose abundantly in Sanskrit for many centuries afterward and continue to produce poems, stories, and plays in this ancient language down to the present day.

Kalidasa; Literature—India

De, Sushil Kumar, and S. N. Dasgupta. (1947) History of Sanskrit Literature. Calcutta, India: University of Calcutta Press.

Dimock, Edward C., Jr., Edwin Gerow, C. M. Naim, A. K. Ramanujan, Gordon Roadarmel, and J. A. B. van Buitenen. (1974) The Literatures of India: An Introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Keith, Arthur Berridale. (1920) A History of Sanskrit Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Winternitz, Moriz. (1963) History of Indian Literature. Trans. by S. Ketkar and H. Kohn. Calcutta, India: University of Calcutta Press.