Sanskrit literature
Sanskrit literature is vast and includes Hindu texts, religious scripture, various forms of poetry (such as epic and lyric), drama and narrative prose.
Some of these subjects include: law and custom, grammar, politics, economics, medicine, astrology-astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, music, dance, dramatics, magic and divination, and sexuality.
[14][15] Classical Sanskrit literature is more varied and includes the following genres: scripture (Hindu, Buddhist and Jain), epics, court poetry (kavya), lyric, drama, romance, fairytale, fables, grammar, civil and religious law (dharma), the science of politics and practical life, the science of love and sexual intercourse (kama), philosophy, medicine, astronomy, astrology and mathematics, and is largely secular in subject-matter.
[51] Another related genre were the "songs in praise of men" (gāthā narasamsi), which focus on the glorious deeds of warriors and princes, which also developed into long epic cycles.
[55][56] The Mahābhārata is in a sense not just a single 'epic poem', but can be seen as a whole body of literature in its own right, a massive collection of many different poetic works built around the heroic tales of the Bharata tribe.
[59][60] According to Winternitz, the Mahābhārata also shows the influence of the Brahmin class, which he argues was engaged in a project of appropriating the poetry of the bards (which was mainly a secular heroic literature) in order to infuse it with their religious theology and values.
Some important works of Hindu Sanskrit poetry include the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, the Hanuman Chalisa, the Aṣṭāvakragītā, Bhaja Govindam, and the Shiva Tandava Stotra.
[84] The learning of these secular sciences took place by way of a guru expounding the subject orally, using works of aphorisms, the sūtra texts, which on account of their terseness would be meaningful only to those who knew how to interpret them.
The bhāṣyas, the commentaries that followed the sūtras were structured in the style of student-teacher dialogue wherein a question is posed, a partial solution, the pūrvapakṣa, proposed, which is then handled, corrected and the final opinion established, the siddhānta.
[87] These Indian Sanskrit language disciples also had an influence on Himalayan cultures, like Tibet, which not only adopted Buddhist religious literature but also these secular works.
[89][90] The study of Sanskrit grammars and prosody was also practiced in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, even when the Pali language focused Theravada school rose to prominence in those regions.
[91][92] By the time of the Sūtra period, the Sanskrit language had evolved sufficiently to make increasing parts of the older literature hard to understand, and to recite correctly.
The early grammatical works of the linguist Yāska (some time between 7th and 4th century BCE), such as his Nirukta, provides the foundation of the study of Sanskrit grammar and etymology.
"[100] Other lexica are later works, including the short Abhidhānaratnamālā of the poet-grammarian Halāyudha (c. 950), Yādavaprakāsha's Vaijayantī, Hemacandra's Abhidhānacintāmaṇi and Anekarthasabdakosha of Medinikara (14th century).
[102] Examples of such works are: The most important of all dharma literature however is the Manusmṛiti, which was composed in verse form, and was intended to apply to all human beings of all castes.
[104][105] According to recent genetic research, it has been determined that it was around the first century CE that population mixture among different groups in India, prevalent on a large scale from around 2200 BCE, ground to a halt with endogamy setting in.
This was influenced by the rise of Sanskrit as a political and literary lingua franca, perhaps reflecting an increased need for elite patronage and a desire to compete with Hindu Brahmins.
[125] These include well known figures like Kumāralatā, Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, Yaśomitra, Dignāga, Sthiramati, Dharmakīrti, Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti, Śāntideva and Śāntarakṣita.
[125] Some Sanskrit works which were written by Buddhists also cover secular topics, such as grammar (vyākaraṇa), lexicography (koṣa), poetry (kāvya), poetics (alaṁkāra), and medicine (Ayurveda).
The only exceptions are the panegyric inscriptions (prasasti) and religious epistles (lekha) commonly found in Buddhist societies which may both be composed in the kavya style.
[87] Sanskrit Kāvya poetry also flourished outside the courts, in towns, learned schools and the homes of pandits and other elites and continues to be composed and studied today.
[162] Examples of these medium length poems include: the Ṛtusaṃhāra, the Ghatakarpara Kavyam, and the Meghadūta of Kālidāsa (the most famous of all Sanskrit poets) which popularized the sandeśa kāvya (messenger poem), Jambukavi's Candraduta (8th to 10th century), Jinasena's Parsvabhyudaya (a Jain work), Vedanta Desika's Hansasandeśa, the Kokila Sandeśa, and Rūpa Gosvāmin's Haṃsadūta (16th century).
According to Lienhard, some of the figures which are most widely written about in medium length religious poems include: "Gautama Buddha, Durga-Kali (or Devi), Ganesa, Krsna (Govinda), Laksmi, Nrsimha, Radha, Rama, Sarasvati, Siva, Surya, the Tathagatas, the Tirthamkaras or Jinas, Vardhamana Mahavira and Visnu.
Some of the most important ones are Bāṇabhaṭṭa's Caṇḍīśataka, the Suryasataka by Mayurbhatta, numerous hymns attributed to Adi Shankara (though the majority of these were likely not composed by him), the Mahimnastava, the Shaiva Pañcāśati (14th century), Abhinavagupta's Shaiva stotras, the southern Mukundamala and Narayaniyam, the Krishnakarṇāmrutam, and the poems of Nilakantha Diksita, Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja, Gangadevi, Ramanuja, Jayadeva, Rupa Goswami, and Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa (17th century).
The narrative moves at a rapid pace, is packed with apt and striking similes and has much genuine poetry, while the style is simpler than what is typical of a mahakāvya.
The Raghuvaṃśa is seen to meet all the criteria of a mahākāvya, such as that the central figure should be noble and clever, and triumphant, that the work should abound in rasa and bhāva, and so on.
[217] Later examples of this genre include the Jain Amitagati's Subhasitaratnasaridoha, Kṣemendra's Cārucaryā, Darpadalana and Samayamatrka, Kusumadeva's Dṛṣṭāntaśataka, Dya Dviveda's Nitimañjari (1494), and Vallabhadeva's Subhāṣitāvalī (15th century).
[223] Some of the earliest Sanskrit dramas are those of Aśvaghoṣa (only a fragment of his Śāriputraprakaraṇa survives) and the many plays of Bhāsa (c.1st century BCE), most of which are based on the two great epics (Mahabharata and Ramayana).
There are also poetic historical chronicles like the Rajatarangini of Kalhana, Rashtraudha Kavya of Rudrakavi, Shivbharata and Paramanandkavya of Paramananda, Rajaramcharitra of Keshavbhatt, Sri Janraj Champu of Krishna Dutta.
Another great Sanskrit epic that remained largely unrecognised till lately is "Dhruv Charitra" written by Pandit Surya Dev Mishra in 1946.
