Taken in conjunction with the author’s Sanskrit Drama, this work covers the field of classical Sanskrit literature as opposed to the Vedic literature, the epics and the Puranas. To bring the subject-matter within the limits of a single volume has rendered it necessary to treat the scientific literature briefly, and to avoid discussions of its subject-matter, which appertains rather to the historian of grammar, philosophy, law, medicine, astronomy or mathematics, than to the literary historians. The mode of treatment has rendered it possible, for the first time in any treatise in English on Sanskrit literature, to pay due attention to the literary qualities of the Kavya. It is in the great writers of Kavya alone, headed by Kalidasa that we find an in-depth feeling for life and nature matched with perfection of expression and rhythm. The Kavya literature includes some of the great poetry of the world. The contents include: The Origin of Sanskrit, the Origin and Development of Kavya Literature, Kalidasa, Bharavi, Historical Kavya Lyric Poetry, the Didactic Fables, the Brhatkatha, the Great Romances, Theories of Poetry, Lexicography and Matrices, the Beginnings of Grammatical Study, Dharmasastras, the Science of Politics Philosophy and Religion, Medicine, Astronomy, Astrology and Mathematics and many more topics of vital interest.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR A.B. Keith
Arthur Berriedale Keith (1879-1944), an eminent authority on Sanskrit language and literature, was born at Portobello, Edinburgh on 5 April 1879. After a brilliant academic career at Edinburgh and Balliol College, Oxford where he studied classics, Sanskrit and Pali, he entered the British Civil Service in 1901. In 1904, he was called to the bar at Inner Temple. Though better known for his deep study of Sanskrit language and literature, Keith also had a deep understanding of law. In 1914, he joined the University of Edinburgh as a Regius Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology and from 1922 he concurrently held the lectureship in the Constitution of the British Empire. Apart from being a member of the Committee on Home Administration of Indian Affairs (1919), he was also a member of a number of important Commissions. He died in Edinburgh on 6 October 1944. Arthur Berriedale Keith’s contributions on Sanskrit language and literature are diverse and are marked by a deep understanding of the obstruse subjects as is evident from his books and many articles in learned journals and translations of ancient Sanskrit Texts. His History of Sanskrit Literature, Sanskrit Drama, Classical Sanskrit Literature, Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads, Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy, Responsible Government in the Dominions apart from the translations of the Karma-Mimamsa, Aitareya Aranyaka, Sankhayana Aranyaka and Mythology of All Raees: Indian and Iranian (jointly with Albert J. Carony) and Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (jointly with A.A. Macdonell) bear testimony to his deep scholarship.
There are no reviews yet.