DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

280 PRIEST AND PRINCE [S.7
The three upper castes had the right to sacraments, to instruction from
the brahmin, and to the Aryan initiation ceremony of long-forgotten
tribal origin ; the sudra had no such rights. Some newcomers with the
requisite power, wealth, and arms could join the upper classes as new
high castes, or marry into the higher castes. It is difficult to imagine
Heliodoros of the Besnagar pillar being treated as a sudra by those
whp had enrolled him into the Bhagavata cult of Krsna-Vasudeva.
Sanskrit was therefore a fresh instrument to mark the unity of the new
upper classes, to emphasize their distance above the rest. The proper
accent performs the same function in other countries. Later, Persian
and still later English replaced Sanskrit in the cities and courts of India,
for the same class-purpose. The position is similar to that of Latin in
Renaissance Europe, French in the 18th century, particularly in
Germany and Russia. Asoka had no known court poet nor does the
Artk. list one among the stipendiaries ; if his public spectacles had any
written dialogue, none has survived. Pali literature has nothing more
secular than the Jataka and such atthakatha commentaries, which
supplement the Tripitaka canon. Classical Sanskrit literature therefore
marks a fresh reallocation of the surplus. In Prakrit, the outstanding
secular work is a collection of 700 stanzas compiled (some written) by
Hala, supposedly a Satavahana. The Brhat-katha of Gunadhya was,
according to a plausible tradition, written for the same court in a country
dialect, Paisaci (= ‘of the goblins’). All that remains of the latter is in
Sanskrit versions like the Katha-sarit-sagara of Somadeva, and the
Brhatkatha-manjari of Ksemendra, both Kasmirians. Hala’s graceful
genre v«se deals with numerous country scenes and common people,
$thout a connecting link between stanzas; its bent, greatly increased by
titillated comment, is mainly erotic, as was not uncommon in Sanskrit
literature of that and later date.
European literature may be described as based primarily upon sex
(love) and violence (prowess). The Sanskrit, because its chief propagator,
teacher, innovator was the brahmin who had in the main to supply
recruits for the priesthood is based in the same way upon love and
religion, which constitute the common interest of brahmin and prince.