Glimpses of History of Sanskrit Literature

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While planning and executing the work the author was acutely conscious of the fact that it is not the first work of its kind. It is quite a challenge for one to work on the same subject on which a number of authorities had worked earlier and still to claim originality. There are many areas the author has visited the first time. And that is the justification for this work.

No history of Sanskrit literature covers the modern Sanskrit literature in its various dimensions, the more noteworthy of them being its assessment from the point of view of theme, vocabulary and style, the children's literature and the literature on Christianity and Sikhism. In the treatment of the Vedic literature there is demonstration in written form of the eight types of recitations, called vikrtipathas as also graphic reproduction of some of the Upanisadic dialogues. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata belong to two different aeons, Yugas, the former to Treta and the latter to Dvapara, Yet the similarity both have with each other within all the dissimilarity subsuming them has been brought out in the write-up "Ramayana and Mahabharata- A Study in Comparison." There is a comprehensive write- up on environment which this history of Sanskrit literature alone deals with. So does it with sciences, natural and physical. Readers may have heard of the various citrabandhas, fittings in pictorial form of Sanskrit verses but may not have actually seen any of them. This history will furnish them with instances of several of them from the Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi and the Sisupalavadha of Magha. In the Kadambari of Bana several characters assume different form and name in re-births which could be quite confusing. Their original names and forms together with the changed ones are presented in the present history in the form of a graph for easy appreciation. A verse from the Naisadhiyacarita called Panficanali in scholarly circles which has different connotations for each of the four deities who had assumed the form of King Nala to confuse Damayanti is reproduced with different interpretations meant for each as also the real Nala. The aerial car. Pusapaka, finds a detailed treatment as given in the Valmiki-Ramayana along with references to aerial cars in other later Sanskrit texts together with mention of seven Sanskrit texts, a number of them still in manuscript, on the science of Aeronautics. There is mention in the present work of a peculiar method called Dakargala for testing the soil for availability of adequate sub-soil water for fertility as also the expertise of the ancients for water harvesting, the agricultural science, the art of cooking, the art of laying gardens and a multitude of other disciplines as evidenced by relevant texts. The very introduction of the work seeks to break fresh ground by touching points like Sanskrit ever having been a spoken language, the presence of it in modern Indian languages with proper illustrations, its future in the present, 21" century and the centuries to follow and the ways to connect it with the common man.

Among other special features of the work is the summary of the content of the first chapter (Tantra) of the five of them of the Panchatantra to illustrate the art of storytelling in ancient India: How twenty one stories, each spinning out of the previous one to illustrate a point, are linked with the main narrative while being dotted with corpus of verses to instruct the reader in worldly wisdom. | The authors, excluding Kalidasa, of Brhatpaficaka, the five great Mahakavyas, indulged at places in their works in four the force of the rarest of the rare kind in display of their pedantry in composing verses with only one, two or four syllables or composing them in a way that they can be read the same way back and forth. The present work reproduces some of them by way of illustration together with their English translation-by no means an easy task because of their forced construction and heavy doses of unfamiliar break-ups of syllables-in meanings more often than not, highly unfamiliar.

The volume also has the unique distinction of having a rare text the Kristusahasranama by 1.C. Chacko as an Appendix.

- Written in easy and fluent style, the work dealing with hundreds of ancient Sanskrit texts, forays occasionally into age-old anecdotes connected with some of the ancient writers serving thereby the purpose of acquainting present-day readers with them who would expectedly pass them on to the next generation ensuring the continuity of tradition.

Born on 29" September 1930, Prof. Satya Vrat Shastri had his early education under his father. Prof. Charu Deva Shastri. He was consistently top rank holder up to Post-Graduation and won University Medals. After doing his Ph.D. at the Banaras Hindu University he joined the University of Delhi where during the forty years of his teaching career he held important positions of the Head of the Department of Sanskrit and Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He was also the Vice-Chancellor of Shri Jagannath Sanskrit University. Puri, Orissa. He is the first recipient of the Jnanpith Award in Sanskrit, 2009. He got the Padma Bhushan Award in 2010.

He has the distinction of having been Visiting Professor in five Universities on three Continents. Among his many foreign students the most prominent is Her Royal Highness Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, the Princess of Thailand. He has attended and chaired a number of national and international conferences and seminars and delivered more than a hundred lectures in Universities and institutions of higher learning in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia and the Far East.

Both a creative writer and a literary critic, Prof. Satya Vrat Shastri has to his credit three Sanskrit Mahakavyas of about a thousand stanzas each, a Prabandhakavya, a Patrakavya (in two volumes), three Khandakavyas, the first ever diary in Sanskrit Dine Dine Yati Madiyajivitam and the first ever autobiography in Sanskrit (in two volumes) Bhavitavyanam Dvarani Bhavanti Sarvatva. The well-acclaimed critical work The Ramayana-A Linguistic Study which is the first ever linguistic appraisal of not only the Valmiki-Ramayana but of any extant Sanskrit work, Kalidasa Studies in two volumes, two studies on Thailand Sanskrit and Indian Culture in Thailand and Thaidesa ke Brahmana, Discovery of Sanskrit Treasures (in seven volumes), Sanskrit Studies—New Perspectives and Sanskrit Writings of European ~ Scholars, more than a century and a half of research articles and Forewords to a hundred and forty books are his contributions as a critic. He has enormous experience in translation work. He has translated A.A. Macdonell's A Vedic Grammar for Students in Hindi, Siramacaritabdhiratnam of Nityananda Shastri in English, the thousand Subhasitas, wise sayings, the Subhasitasahasri in Hindi and English, the Canakyaniti in Hindi and English and the select poems in different languages of poet laureates of Europe in Sanskrit. He is the subject matter of twenty theses for the degrees of M. Phil. Ph.D. and D.Litt. in Indian Universities.

He is the recipient of one hundred and five Honours and Awards, national and internationai, including Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, President of India Certificate of Honour, Thai Royal Decoration. "The Most Admirable Order of Direk Gunabhorn", the Honour "Autorita Academische Italiano Straniere", the Civil and Academic Authority for Foreigners from the Govt. of Italy, the Medallion of Honour from the Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium, the Golden Prize from GESMEO, the International Institute of Advanced Asian Studies, Torino, Italy and five Honorary Doctorates from Indian and foreign Universities. In the Citation for the Honorary Doctorate at the Silpakorn University, Bangkok, he was described as "a living legend in the field of Sanskrit."

It was late in the year 2008 that I had received an invitation from the National Autonomous University of Mexico to deliver eight lectures on the subject of the history of Sanskrit literature. There were two conditions for them. One, the lectures should cover the entire history and not only a period of it, ancient, medieval or modern. Two, the lectures should be in a written form, the written script to be made available to the University so that it could be translated in Spanish for the convenience of the listeners who though familiar with English may not have a thorough grasp of it. The Spanish translation could be brought out in a book form later. Realizing fully well the imponderability of the task, I, in keeping with my wont, not to shy away from undertaking the most difficult of the assignments, undertook it. I started working on it in right earnest. The lectures were to be delivered the year following the one the invitation for them came. I had only a couple of months to prepare them. By the time I had completed five lectures comprising 175 pages in print in demy size there came the news of the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico. The travel to and from it was banned. The ban lasted several months. There was terror all around. This proved the dampener. I lost interest in the work.There was no further writing. One precaution I took however. Whatever I had written up to that point, I kept secure in a file in my cupboard. The years rolled by. Age was overtaking me. That was propelling me to bring to completion as of my works as were unfinished. In that connection I remembered the script of the five lectures. I took out the file. The script was there. It dealt with a part of the classical Sanskrit literature. I thought of adding to it the Vedic literature, the remaining part of the | classical Sanskrit literature that could also cover such topics as agriculture, gardening, sciences, physical and natural, aeronautics and environment. The work has now swelled to 626 pages. While planning and executing it I was acutely conscious of the fact that it is not the first work of its kind. A number of works had already made their appearance both in English and Hindi. It is quite a challenge for one to work on the same subject on which a number of authorities had worked earlier and still to claim originality. There are many areas I have visited the first time. And that is the justification for this work. Though I am ‘humble to a fault, I would not feel chary of pinpointing some of the areas covered the first time.

No history of Sanskrit literature covers to my knowledge the modern Sanskrit literature and that too in its various dimensions, the more noteworthy of them being its assessment from the point of view of theme, vocabulary and style, the children’s literature and the literature on Christianity and Sikhism. In the treatment of the Vedic literature there is demonstration in written form of the eight types of recitations, called vikrtipathas resorted to for the preservation of the integrity of the Vedic text. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are two great epics belonging to two different aeons, Yugas, the former belonging to Treta and the latter to Dvapara. Yet the similarity both of them have with each other within all the dissimilarity subsuming them has been brought out in the write-up "Ramayana and Mahabharata—A Study in Comparison". Scholars cannot but mark the deep insight and the diligence gone into its preparation. So also cannot they but mark the same in the detailed write-up on environment which this history of Sanskrit literature alone deals with. Readers may have heard of the various citrabandhas, fittings in pictorial form of Sanskrit verses but may not have actually seen any of them. This history will furnish them with instances of several of them from the Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi and the Sisupalavadha of Magha. In the Kadambari of Bana several characters assume different form and name in rebirth which could be quite confusing. Their original names and forms together with the changed names and forms are presented in the present history in the form of a graph for easy appreciation of readers. A verse from the Naisadhiyacarita called Paficanali in scholarly circles which has different connotations for each of the four deities who had assumed the form of King Nala to confuse Damayanti is reproduced in the present history with different interpretations meant for each as also the real Nala. The aerial car, the Pusapaka, finds a detailed treatment in the present work as given in the Valmiki-Ramayana along with references to aerial cars in other later Sanskrit texts together with mention of seven Sanskrit texts, a number of them still in manuscript, on the science of Aeronautics. So gets the treatment of gardening with the mention of an important text on it. There is mention in the present work of a peculiar method called Dakargala for testing the soil as also the expertise of the ancients for water harvesting. The very introduction to the work seeks to break fresh ground by touching points like Sanskrit ever having been a spoken language, the presence of it in Indian languages with appropriate illustrations, its future in the present, 21