II
THR ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF KAVYA LITERATURE
i . The Sources of the Kavya
INDIA produced no historian of her Sanskrit literature, and, naturally enough, the appearance of great poets of the calibre of Kalidasa, Bharavi, and Magha so eclipsed earlier efforts that their works and even their names passed into oblivion. Natural causes helped the result ; it was difficult to multiply manuscripts, difficult to preserve them, and it is not surprising that the lesser poets should have passed from recollection. On the other hand, the absence of literary remains for the centuries just before and after the Christian era, and the fact that foreign invasions, Greeks, Parthians, and Cakas, and Yueh-chi deeply affected the north-west of India, gave an appearance of reason to Max Miiller's famous suggestion J that there was a comparative cessation of literary activity in India until in the sixth century a great renaissance began with Kalidasa and his contemporaries. The theory is now wholly discredited in the form in which it was put forward, if for no other reason than that it ignored the Brah- manical revival of the Gupta empire at the beginning of the fourth century A. V>. But it lingers on in the form of the suggestion 2 that in the period up to that revival Sanskrit was little used for secular poetry, which was composed in Prakrit, until the reviving power of the Brahmins resulted in their creating the epic by translation from Prakrit originals, developed a lyric poetry to replace the simpler Prakrit songs of the people, and transformed the popular beast-fable and fairy-tale.
For this theory of a Prakrit period of Indian literature preced-
1 India (1883), pp 281 ff. Contrast Lassen, Ind. Alt., ii." 1159 a*.
2 Bhandarkar, Early Hist, of India (1920), pp. 70 ff., who admits the existence of some Sanskrit literature, but places Apvaghosa under Kamska c. A. D. 300. But as early as 185 B.C. theie was a Brahmanical revival under Pusyamilra; EHI. pp. 308 ff. ; Przyluski, La llgendt dc remfcreur Afoka, pp. 90 ff.
