ir future the problem of
existence; and the present, which ought to be the solution of both,
seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their
energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another
world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth is
to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though
this is said chiefly with reference to them before they were brought
in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still
visible in the Hindus, as described by the companions of Alexander,
nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which
the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to
worship, is the sphere of religion and philosophy; and nowhere have
religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deep in the mind of a
nation as in India. The shape which these ideas took amongst the
different classes of society, and at different periods of
civilisation, naturally varies from coarse superstition to sublime
spiritualism. But, taken as a whole, history supplies no second
instance where the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed
all the other faculties of a people.

It was natural, therefore, that the literary works of such a nation,
when first discovered in Sanskrit MSS. by Wilkins, Sir W. Jones, and
others, should have attracted the attention of all interested in the
history of the human race. A new page in man's biography was laid
open, and a literature as large as that of Greece or Rome was to be
studied. The Laws of Manu, the two epic poems, the Ramaya_n_a and
Mahabharata, the six complete systems of philosophy, works on
astronomy and medicine, plays, stories, fables, elegies, and lyrical
effusions, were read with intense interest, on account of their age
not less than their novelty.

Still this interest was confined to a small number of students, and in
a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who,
from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of
human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered
what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was
genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the
artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature.
Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, but
nowhere individuality, no natural growth, and but few signs of str