Taken in conjunction with my Sanskrit Drama, published in 1924, 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 appertain rather to the historian of grammar, philosophy, law, medicine, astronomy, or mathematics, than to the literary historian. This 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. Though it was to Englishmen, such as Sir William Jones and H.T. Colebrooke, that our earliest knowledge of Sanskrit poetry was due, no English poet shared Goethe’s marvellous appreciation of the merits of works known to him only through the distorting medium of translations, and attention in England has usually been limited to the Vedic literature, as a source for comparative philology, the history of religion, or Indo-European antiquities; to the mysticism and monism of Sanskrit philosophy; and to the fables and fairy tales in their relations to western parallels.
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.
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