DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

8. 7 J SRNGARA ; PANINI 281
If classical Sanskrit treatment of love is franker than in Europe
between the Alexandrian and modern writers, it is because the language
was understood by a progressively smaller proportion of the people, even
when the absolute number increased. It was never a koine as such,
only a hoini between different regions for the ruling class and its priesthood.
Canakya’s Arthasastra could not possibly have been a public textbook on
political economy, as its contents show ; in particular, the fourteenth section
with its alchemy and poisons would be permissible only for a treatise kept
the secret property of a few. Asokan rescripts prove that the Magadhan
administrative language was not Sanskrit. The position of the Kamasutra
(3rd century A, D.?) which models itself upon the Arthasastra and has
therefore been taken to be its contemporary, is totally different. It was
meant for the upper classes possessed of Sanskrit and of leisure, who
could thereby practice the art of love with a remarkable thoroughness,
without the Minnesingers’ helpless pining or Hellenistic aberrations.
One may observe that Homeric literature is reticent in sexual matters
as compared with the frankly salacious Alexandrian; Greek was
the language of the whole people (except perhaps a few slaves) in the
earlier days, while its ruling class character in Egypt needs no proof. For
India, it is extraordinary that’even Jain and Mahayana Buddhist monks
could read with enjoyment, perhaps compose, srngara verses which cajinot
with decency be translated into English; their customary translation
into Latin, in extreme ‘ cases Greek, by European scholars again
shows the influence of class upon erudition. Nevertheless, the purity of
morals, sincere religious devotion, personal asceticism of these monks is
not to be questioned; they cannot be compared 1 to, say, Boccaccio’s
lascivious clerics. The literary Srngara is a good counterpart of the
voluptuous sculptures which decorate caitya assembly halls; both derive
from the luxury of the class in power.
The uniform development and grip of Sanskrit was only made
possible by a prodigious technical achievement, that of a grammar whose
compact sutra formulae could be memorized by a student during his
teen-age period of rigid study, to serve him thereafter without the aid of
writing which might give the art away to the vulgar. The sutra style