Read Ebook: Illustrated history of ancient literature oriental and classical by Quackenbos John D John Duncan

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Ebook has 1279 lines and 144417 words, and 26 pages

dew of morning, I must pause Ere eagerly I taste the proffered sweetness."

Then Sakoontal? seeks her ring, but alas! it is not on her finger; she must have dropped it in the Ganges. In the midst of her confusion a nymph appears, and carries her off to a sacred retreat, where she gives birth to a son.

Meanwhile a fish is caught, in which is found the fatal ring, stamped with the rajah's name. It is restored to its owner, and at once the recollection of his long-forgotten Sakoontal? flashes upon his mind. Overwhelmed with poignant regret for her loss, he abandons himself to melancholy for a time, calling on her beloved name, or trying to beguile his grief by tracing with his pencil her features now but too well remembered. At length ambition and piety unite to wake him from his lethargy. He embarks in a campaign against the giants, enemies of the gods; is victorious; and finds the consummation of happiness at last in a union with his long-lost wife, and with his son, whose name, Bh?rata, becomes the most distinguished in the mythology of India.

English readers are enabled to enjoy the beauties of Sakoontal? through the metrical version of Prof. Williams.

EXTRACTS FROM SAKOONTAL?.

PARTING WORDS OF THE SAGE TO HIS ADOPTED DAUGHTER.

Weep not, my daughter, check the gathering tear That lurks beneath thine eyelid, ere it flow And weaken thy resolve; be firm and true-- True to thyself and me; the path of life Will lead o'er hill and plain, o'er rough and smooth, And all must feel the steepness of the way; Tho' rugged be thy course, press boldly on.

Honor thy betters; ever be respectful To those above thee. Should thy wedded lord Treat thee with harshness, thou must never be Harsh in return, but patient and submissive. Be to thy menials courteous, and to all Placed under thee considerate and kind: Be never self-indulgent, but avoid Excess in pleasure; and, when fortune smiles, Be not puffed up. Thus to thy husband's house Wilt thou a blessing prove, and not a curse.

How, O my child! shall my bereaved heart Forget its bitterness, when, day by day, Full in my sight shall grow the tender plants Reared by thy care, or sprung from hallowed grain Which thy loved hands have strewn around the door-- A frequent offering to our household gods."

THE KING AND SAKOONTAL?'S PORTRAIT.

"My finger, burning with the glow of love, Has left its impress on the painted tablet; While here and there, alas! a scalding tear Has fallen on the cheek and dimmed its brightness. Go fetch the brush that I may finish it. A sweet Sirisha blossom should be twined Behind her ear, its perfumed crest depending Toward her cheek; and resting on her bosom, A lotus-fibre necklace, soft and bright As an autumnal moonbeam, should be traced."

While gazing on the picture, the king in his infatuation mistakes for reality a bee which he has himself painted in the act of settling on the rosy lips of his love, and after attempting to drive it off is apprised of his error by an attendant, whom he thus addresses:--

MONIER WILLIAMS.

Sakoontal? may justly be called the pearl of Eastern dramatic poetry. It has been translated into every European tongue, and has elicited the admiration of all civilized nations. In the language of Goethe:--

"Would'st thou the young year's blossom and the fruits of its decline, And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed-- Would'st thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine? I name thee, O Sakoontal?! and all at once is said."

From the author of this drama we have two other pieces worthy of his fame, "the Hero and the Nymph" and a popular comedy. His era was the golden age of the Hindoo theatre.

Other noted plays, a few out of many, are "the Toy Cart," a domestic drama with a public underplot; "the Signet of the Minister," which had a political bearing; "the Stolen Marriage;" and an allegorical play, "the Moonrise of Science."

The Indian plays began and closed with a benediction or prayer; in many cases there was a preliminary account of the author, or a colloquy between the manager and one of the actors, leading the way to the play itself. The heroes were generally kings or deities. As foils to these, it was usual to introduce mountebanks or buffoons, and as such Brahmans were made to figure. The Hindoo dramatists did not hesitate to set forth their priests in a ridiculous light; a remarkable fact, when we remember that the drama in India was a semi-religious institution, and that the managers of companies were usually themselves Brahmans. The playwright who in Greece should have taken such liberties with his religious superiors would have run the risk of being driven from the stage, if indeed he were not more seriously handled by an indignant audience.

The consistency observed in managing the dialogue is noteworthy. The parts spoken by divinities and heroes, rulers and priests, are always in ancient Sanscrit; while the inferior personages and the female characters use the later and more familiar dialect. Want of acquaintance with the sacred language, which thus formed the staple of the classical plays, no doubt prevented the common people from fully understanding and enjoying dramatic representations; and hence the latter never attained that popularity which they had in other countries. They were the entertainment of the cultured class rather than the masses.

Another curious feature of the Hindoo drama was the absence of scenery, the plays being mostly represented in the open air, the courts of palaces, etc. The great advantage which the modern performer derives from fine scenic effects was entirely wanting. Changes of scene could be indicated only in the text, by minute descriptions of the new locality, thrown into the mouths of the speakers and left for the audience to fill out and remember. No shifting of scenes, for instance, as with us, would denote the entrance of one of the characters from out-doors into a drawing-room; but the personage entering, either in a soliloquy or in colloquy with some other, would immediately call attention to every little point--the threshold, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the doors, the windows, the furniture--and the glowing fancy of his hearers would at once picture the scene as vividly as if it stood before them in reality.

The proprieties were strictly observed. To represent a death scene would have been intolerable; nor only so, but in the earlier and purer days no dramatist would introduce before his audience a scene of violence, eating, sleeping, or the performance of the marriage ceremony. A charming love-scene in the Sakoontal? breaks off just at the critical moment when the hero and heroine are about to interchange a token of affection; yet the embrace does not appear always to have been repugnant to the Hindoo ideas of delicacy.

As to the date of the dramas that have been mentioned, they are supposed to have been written during the first ten centuries of the Christian Era; but here, as in the case of the epics and lyrics, we are left to conjecture. Could we know more certainly what times they reflect, our pleasure in perusing them would be complete.

TALES AND FABLES.

India has long enjoyed the reputation, and not without reason, of having been the favorite home of fairy-tale and fable. From her storehouse of fictions, many waifs have crept into the literatures of both Europe and Asia, and striking the popular taste have attained wide currency. Tongues have changed, dynasties have fallen; but these stories by unknown hands still live in the nursery, influencing the pliant minds of the children of to-day as they have done those of the last twenty centuries.

THE STUPID BRAHMAN.

"In the town of Devikotta there lived a Brahman of the name of Devasarman. At the feast of the great equinox he received a plateful of rice. He took it, went into a potter's shop, which was full of crockery, and, overcome by the heat, he lay down in a corner and began to doze. In order to protect his plate of rice, he kept a stick in his hand; and he began to think:'Now if I sell this plate of rice, I shall receive ten cowries. I shall then, on the spot, buy pots and plates, and after having increased my capital again and again I shall buy and sell betel nuts and dresses till I grow enormously rich. Then I shall marry four wives, and the youngest and prettiest of the four I shall make a great pet of. Then the other wives will be so angry and begin to quarrel. But I shall be in a great rage, and take a stick, and give them a good flogging.'

While he said this, suiting the action to the thought, he laid about him with his stick; the plate of rice was smashed to pieces, and many of the pots in the shop were broken. The potter, hearing the noise, ran in; and when he saw his pots broken, gave the Brahman a good scolding and drove him out of the shop.

Therefore I say,'He who rejoices over plans for the future will come to grief, like the Brahman who broke the pots.'"--MAX M?LLER.

Of the numerous collections of tales and romances, the best known is "the Ocean of the Rivers of Narratives," the original of that more familiar compilation, the Arabian Nights.

HISTORY, GRAMMAR, ETC.

Sanscrit is also worthily represented in other departments of literature; on the fine arts we have nothing worthy of notice, but science has not been neglected, while historical, grammatical, and philosophical works, complete the category of its productions. Its chronicles, however, obscured as they are by myths without number, are comparatively valueless; but one deserves the name of history, the Chronicle of Cashmere, or the Stream of the Kings, extending from the fabulous ages to the reign of Akbar, who reduced that province in the 16th century.

But in grammar we must certainly award to Sanscrit the very first place. Commentaries on the constructions of the Veda, dating perhaps from 750 B.C., embody the earliest attempts at grammatical and critical investigation with which we are acquainted; and in the digest of P?nini we have the first systematic grammar that the world ever produced--a book remarkable for its completeness, declared by Max M?ller to be "the perfection of an empirical analysis of language, unsurpassed--nay, even unapproached, by anything in the grammatical literature of other nations."

In connection with the literature of India, we may also mention inscriptions on monuments, in temples and grottoes, and on plates of marble and copper. These are worthy of study mainly in view of the historical information they may afford.

Such is a history, in outline, of the ancient Sanscrit, of which Prof. M?ller has written: "The study of it will open before you large layers of literature as yet almost unknown and unexplored, and allow you an insight into strata of thought rich in lessons that appeal to the deepest sympathies of the human heart."

BUDDHIST LITERATURE.

About 500 B.C., a new and purer religion was preached in India by a monk of royal birth, afterward called Buddha . It met with a hearty reception from the people, for it taught men to live in charity with their neighbors, to reverence their parents, to practise truth and morality; above all, it overthrew the institution of caste, and abolished the foolish system of Brahman sacrifices. The riches and fleeting pleasures of this world, Buddha proclaimed unworthy of pursuit, representing life itself as a burden, and promising his followers a paradise of eternal rest beyond the grave. No wonder that thousands declared in favor of the new faith, which during a struggle of many centuries disputed with Brahmanism for the supremacy of India. Pushing out to the northeast, it made its way into Thibet, China, and Japan; and at the present day has more followers than any other religious system, their number being estimated at 450,000,000.

The sacred books of the Buddhists are called the Tripitaka ; one is metaphysical, another disciplinary, and the third contains the discourses of Buddha. They are written in a dialect of Sanscrit, and are made up of 600,000 stanzas, containing five times as much matter as our Bible.

EXTRACTS FROM THE BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES.

"The succoring of mother and father, the cherishing of child and wife, and the following of a lawful calling,--this is the greatest blessing.

The giving of alms, the abstaining from sins, the eschewing of intoxicating drink, diligence in good deeds, reverence and humility, contentment and gratitude,--this is the greatest blessing.

He who lives for pleasure only, his senses uncontrolled, idle and weak, the tempter will certainly overcome him as the wind throws down a weak tree.

Like a beautiful flower, full of color but without scent, are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly.

As the bee collects nectar, and departs without injuring the flower, or its color and scent, so let the sage dwell on earth.

Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart,'It will not come near unto me.' Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gathers it little by little.

Let us live happily then, though we call nothing our own; not hating those who hate us, free from greed among the greedy. We shall then be like the bright gods, feeding on happiness."

NOTES ON HINDOO LITERATURE, ETC.

The literature of India incalculably vast, and its individual works voluminous. The Mah?bh?rata six times as long as the Iliad, Odyssey, and AEneid united; the R?m?yana half this size. The eighteen Pur?nas contain 1,600,000 lines. The library of one of the kings said to have numbered so many books that a hundred Brahmans were employed in taking care of it, and a thousand dromedaries were required to convey it from place to place; twenty years were consumed in condensing its contents, by the royal command, into an encyclopaedia of 12,000 volumes. Sir William Jones computed that the longest life would not suffice for the perusal of all the Sanscrit writings.--First century B.C. believed to have been an Augustan age of Indian literature.

Writing apparently unknown to the ancient Hindoos before the time of P?nini. No mention anywhere made, in the early works, of writing materials, pen or brush, paper, bark, or skin. The Vedic hymns sung or repeated probably for a thousand years before they were committed to writing. The use of the alphabet long regarded as impious. First letters appear in Buddhist inscriptions of the 3d century B.C. Later Indian manuscripts, beautifully inscribed on palm leaves. The letters of the Sanscrit alphabet thought to be the oldest forms of our Arabic figures, which came originally from India, as did also our decimal system.

Chess one of the earliest inventions of the Hindoos--called chess from the principal piece. The Brahman inventor, so the story goes, asked of the reigning emperor as his reward, a single grain of wheat for the first square of the chess-board, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to the sixty-fourth; apparently a modest price, but one that it would have taken years to pay with the wheat crop of the whole world. Elephants, horses, foot-soldiers, and chariots, the original chess-men. From India, the game found its way into China, Japan, and Persia, and finally into Europe.--Throwing dice, also, a favorite pastime; the "Game of Four Crowns," with playing-cards, early known to the Hindoos.

Square copper money coined in the 3d century B.C., and stamped with inscriptions in a Sanscrit dialect.

The Avesta was first made known to Europeans by a French orientalist; Anquetil Duperron , who went to India for the express purpose of discovering the sacred books of the Parsees. With great difficulty he at length possessed himself of the much-desired Avesta manuscripts, and in 1771, after long and patient effort, he gave his countrymen men the first translation of the Avesta into a European tongue. The language has since been carefully studied, and in our own day has at last been mastered. Time wrought many changes in it; the Persian of Xerxes' reign differed much more from the Avesta of antiquity than our present language does from the English of Chaucer. Further modifications and the introduction of Arabic elements have made modern Persian still more unlike the ancient vernacular.

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