DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

8.7] STAMP OF THE UPPER CLASS 283
to the grammarian to say, make me such and such a word. Thus, in
Sanskrit, a material object in general is padartha, which literally
signifies ‘ word-meaning’; semantic idealism is therefore ingrained in
the idiom, as it was in the mind of the chief proponent of Sanskrit, the
brahmin.
The later vedas and upanisads are full of word-mysticism. Floridity
became increasingly a characteristic of Sanskrit so that the use of twisted
construction, intricate compounds, innumerable synonyms,
overexaggeration make it more and more difficult to obtain the precise
meaning from a Sanskrit document. Magnificent eulogies regularly fail
to mention the name of the king to whom the panegyric is addressed, let
alone the particular feat being praised. Technical literature suffers most
from this victory of form over meaning though Sanskrit did help reduce
it to concise — though incomprehensible — mnemonic formulae.
Modern Latin names have been invented for plants to make their
identification precise. Sanskrit terminology is anything but precise. The
Sanskrit plant-name ananta (‘ without end’) is used in medical
treatises of no less than fourteen different species, from a foot-high
leguminous shrub to a Rubiaceous tree. This not only betrays local
variation, influence of local usages and language (which really
maintained the vigour of Sanskrit), but shows how Indian science
degenerated into secret disciplines. Most of the fourteen plants are in
use to this day. Every Ayurvedic physician maintains that his is THE real
ananta, the next man (who treats- the same disease by a totally different
ananta plant) an ignorant quack.
At its best, Sanskrit literature is exquisite, with an intricate pattern
of beauty. Even at its best, it does not give the depth, simplicity of
expression, the grandeur of spirit, the real greatness of humanity that
one .finds in the Pali Dhammapada, the Divina Commedia, or
Pilgrim’s Progress. It is the literature of and for a class, not a people.
The language suffered from its long, monopolistic association with
a class that had no direct interest in technique, manual operations, trade
agreements, contracts, or surveys. The class did have leisure enough
to write their tenuous ideas in a tortuous manner above the reach of
the common herd, and to unravel them from such writings. Prose
virtually disappeared from high literary Sanskrit. Words that survived in