If, then, the mere language of a people—the bare etymology of isolated words, and the history of the changes they have undergone in form and meaning—furnishes an excellent guide to ite past and present condition, moral, intellectual, and physical, how much more must this be true of its literature ! And here again we are met by the remarkable fact that India, notwithstanding all its diversities of race, caste, customs, creed, and climate, has to this day but one real literature, accepted by all alike—the common inheritance of all. In European countries, literature changes with language. Each modern dialect has its own literature, which is the best representative of the actual condition of the people to whom it belongs. To know the Italians, we need not study Latin, when the modern literature is at our command. But the literature of the Hindu vernacular dialects (except perhaps that of Tamil) is scarcely yet deserving of the name. In most cases it consists of mere reproductions of the Sanskritl. To understand the past and present state of Indian society—to unravel the complex texture of the Hindu mind ; to explain inconsistencies otherwise inexplicable—we must trust to Sanskrit literature alone. Sanskrit is the only language of poetry, drama, law, philosophy—the only key to a vast and apparently confused religious system, and a sure medium of approach to the hearts of the Hindus, however unlearned, or however disunited. It is, in truth, even more to India than classical and patristic literature was to Europe at the time of the Reformation. It gives a deeper impress to the Hindu mind, so that every Hindu, however unlettered, is unconsciously affected by it, and every Englishman, however strange to the East, if only he be at home in Sanskrit literature, will rapidly become at home in every corner of our Indian territories.
These considerations will, I trust, justify my attempt to give some idea of the history and character of India's literature.
Let it be clearly understood, however, that the examples of Indian wisdom given in this volume generally present the bright side of the
1 With regard to Hindustani (otherwise called Urdu), the proper language of the North-western districts and passing current, like French in Europe, over all India, it cannot be said to rank as a distinct language till the time of Tiraur, about A. D. 1400, when it was finally formed in his Urdu or camp by blending Hindi with the Arabic and Persian of the Muhammadan invaders. Its prose literature, such as it is, certainly owes more to Arabic than to Sanskrit, and is quite modern. The productions of its greatest poet, Sauda, are not much more than a hundred years old.
