1. The Language.--2. The Social Constitution of India. Brahmanism.--3.
Characteristics of the Literature and its Divisions.--4. The Vedas and
other Sacred Books.--5. Sanskrit Poetry; Epic; The Ramayana and
Mahabharata. Lyric Poetry. Didactic Poetry; the Hitopadesa. Dramatic
Poetry.--6.. History and Science.--7. Philosophy. 8. Buddhism.--9. Moral
Philosophy. The Code of Manu.--10. Modern Literatures of India.--11.
Education. The Brahmo Somaj.
1. THE LANGUAGE.--Sanskrit is the literary language of the Hindus, and for
two thousand years has served as the means of learned intercourse and
composition. The name denotes _cultivated_ or _perfected_, in distinction
to the Prakrit or _uncultivated_, which sprang from it and was
contemporary with it.
The study of Sanskrit by European scholars dates less than a century back,
and it is important as the vehicle of an immense literature which lays
open the outward and inner life of a remarkable people from a remote epoch
nearly to the present day, and as being the most ancient and original of
the Indo-European languages, throwing light upon them all. The Aryan or
Indo-European race had its ancient home in Central Asia. Colonies migrated
to the west and founded the Persian, Greek, and Roman civilization, and
settled in Spain and England. Other branches found their way through the
passes of the Himalayas and spread themselves over India. Wherever they
went they asserted their superiority over the earlier people whom they
found in possession of the soil, and the history of civilization is
everywhere the history of the Aryan race. The forefathers of the Greek and
Roman, of the Englishman and the Hindu, dwelt together in India, spoke the
same language, and worshiped the same gods. The languages of Europe and
India are merely different forms of the original Aryan speech. This is
especially true of the words of common family life. _Father, mother,
brother, sister_, and _widow_, are substantially the same in most of the
Aryan languages, whether spoken on the banks of the Ganges, the Tiber, or
the Thames. The word _daughter_, which occurs in nearly all of them, is
derived from the Sanskrit word signifying _to draw milk_, and preserves
the memory of the time when the daughter was the little milkmaid in the
primitive Aryan household.
It is probable that as late as the third or fourth century B.C. it was
still spoken. New dialects were engrafted upon it which at length
superseded it, though it has continued to be revered as the sacred and
literary language of the country. Among the modern tongues of India, the
Hindui and the Hindustani may be mentioned; the former, the language of
the pure Hindu population, is written in Sanskrit characters; the latter
is the language of the Mohammedan Hindus, in which Arabic letters are
used. Many of the other dialects spoken and written in Northern India are
derived from the Sanskrit. Of the more important among them there are
English grammars and dictionaries.
2. SOCIAL CONSTITUTION OF INDIA.--Hindu literature takes its character
both from the social and the religious institutions of the country. The
social constitution is based on the distinction of classes into which the
people, from the earliest times, have been divided, and which were the
natural effect of the long struggle between the aboriginal tribes and the
new race which had invaded India. These castes are four: 1st. The Brahmins
or priests; 2d. The warriors and princes; 3d. The husbandmen; 4th. The
laborers. There are, besides, several impure classes, the result of an
intermingling of the different castes. Of these lower classes some are
considered utterly abominable--as that of the Pariahs. The different
castes are kept distinct from each other by the most rigorous laws; though
in modern times the system has been somewhat modified.