Greatness of Sanskrit Literature

According to Sri Aurobindo – “The greatness of a literature lies first in the greatness and worth of its substance, the value of its thought and the beauty of its forms, but also in the degree to which, satisfying the highest conditions of the art of speech, it avails to bring out and raise the soul and life or the living and the ideal mind of a people, an age, a culture, through the genius of some of its greatest or most sensitive representative spirits.” (Sri Aurobindo: ‘The Foundations of Indian Culture’, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol.14, p. 255) Here Sri Aurobindo focuses mainly on the subject matter of a literary work, the thought embedded in it, the beauty of expression, the art of speech, the cultural heritage and the social settings. In this light he speaks of the greatness of Sanskrit literature as follows:

“The ancient and classical creations of the Sanskrit tongue both in quality and in body and abundance of excellence, in their potent originality and force and beauty, in their substance and art and structure, in grandeur and justice and charm of speech and in the height and width of the reach of their spirit stand very evidently in the front rank among the world’s great literatures. The language itself, as has been universally recognised by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect and wonderfully sufficient literary instruments developed by the human mind, at once majestic and sweet and flexible, strong and clearly-formed and full and vibrant and subtle, and its quality and character would be of itself a sufficient evidence of the character and quality of the race whose mind it expressed and culture of which it was the reflecting medium.”

These two striking sentences of Sri Aurobindo highlight all the characteristic features of the Sanskrit literature.

The literary glories of Sanskrit are multi¬faceted and many-splendoured. Valmiki, Vyasa and Vish¬vanatha; Kalidasa, Kapila and Kalhana; Jayadeva, Jaimini and Jagannatha; Bhavabhuti, Bhasa and Bharata; Asvaghosa, Abhinavagupta and Anandavardhana; Vatsyayana, Visakha¬datta and Vidyadhara; the list is endless. The corpus of Sanskrit literature covers the whole gamut of human ex¬perience; it is by no means confined to grammar or philosophy. Every human emotion and aspira¬tion, every beat of the human heart, every flight of the human mind, the joys and sorrows of humanity are to be found in Sanskrit literature, and this makes it continuously meaningful in all ages to come.