SANSKRIT STUDIES
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poets achieved excellence. The miniature word-pictures in which it abounds have evoked universal admiration and even the Indian dramas owe part of their beauty to their lyrical elegance. Broadly speaking, its theme is either irngara or santi , the one typified in Kalidasa, the poet of love and the other, in Bhartrhari, the prophet of asceticism. The method followed in these chapters is to discuss the dates of the writers, summarize the contents of their chief works, offer remarks on their style and language and then wind up with illustrative quotations from them. Realising, however, the essentially untranslatable character of Sanskrit poetry, our author first gives the selections in the original and then translates them, often adding brief critical remarks. The portions of the book containing the quotations are not the least interesting for, taken together, they serve as an admirable ‘Chrestomathie’. The
addition of an Index of initial words when the book is next printed will greatly facilitate reference to the large number of beautiful slokas which have thus been brought together here. The chapters that follow treat of works written in prose or in prose intermixed with verse such as the Fables. The method followed here is the same as before and the literary estimates given are of equal value and interest. Another important subject included in this Part is Poetics which, so far as histories of Sanskrit literature go, gets a systematic treatment, for the first time here. Dr. Keith devotes two chapters to it, in the first of which he deals generally with the aims and achievements of the Sanskrit poet and in the second, specifically with the various theories of poetry that were formulated from time to time by Indian literary critics. The theories are of great interest — especially that known as the theory of Dhvani >t which holds that suggest- ion marks the true process of poetry. It means that the ultimate content of poetry baffles direct expression, and accord- ingly values suggestion not as a mere trick of style but as the sole means of communicating what is otherwise incommunicable. The theory is characteristically Indian and may remind one of the Vedantic view of Brahman which words and thoughts, as it is said, alike fail to grasp.
The last part is devoted to scientific or technical literature such as Astronomy, Law and Grammar. It stands on a footing different from the one so far considered for its appeal is not aesthetic and it cannot therefore be subjected to an artistic judgment. Nor is
