2023-03-26 16:29:00 by ambuda-bot
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XV
oceans and rivers gives scope for the poet to enter into
a long description of these objects and these descriptions
form the chief thing in the epic, not the narrative. The
description is for its own sake. To say that these des-
criptions are mostly alike is not pointing out a very
great defect. Objects of beauty may be alike in the
mere framework, but each has an individuality and each
gives a pleasure and enjoyment of a distinctive type.
In Sanskrit poetry there is not a very sharp division
between head and heart. All the poets were very great
intellectuals; all the intellectual giants were very great
poets also. From the introduction to the present work,
which follows this foreword, it will be seen that the
author of this work Rajacüdāmaṇi Dīkṣita was himself
a great intellectual genius, who wrote many works on
philosophy. In Sanskrit, works of a purely scientific
nature are in many cases sweet poetry as well, and poetry
is nearly always as instructive as a science manual. Life
in ancient India was much more wide in scope than in
the modern age, this age of materialism and rationalism.
To a modern man, the physical body and the emotions
and reasoning faculty constitute life. But in ancient
India there was another factor which was very promi-
nent and that is intuition. There is an element in Indian
poetry, which is incomprehensible
incomprehensible to a modern mind.
Therefore he calls it things in the air, things that have
nothing to do with life. There is a vast region in man's
life brought to light only through intuition and in a life
where intuition played such a great part, what we now
call our problems of life counted very little and formed
oceans and rivers gives scope for the poet to enter into
a long description of these objects and these descriptions
form the chief thing in the epic, not the narrative. The
description is for its own sake. To say that these des-
criptions are mostly alike is not pointing out a very
great defect. Objects of beauty may be alike in the
mere framework, but each has an individuality and each
gives a pleasure and enjoyment of a distinctive type.
In Sanskrit poetry there is not a very sharp division
between head and heart. All the poets were very great
intellectuals; all the intellectual giants were very great
poets also. From the introduction to the present work,
which follows this foreword, it will be seen that the
author of this work Rajacüdāmaṇi Dīkṣita was himself
a great intellectual genius, who wrote many works on
philosophy. In Sanskrit, works of a purely scientific
nature are in many cases sweet poetry as well, and poetry
is nearly always as instructive as a science manual. Life
in ancient India was much more wide in scope than in
the modern age, this age of materialism and rationalism.
To a modern man, the physical body and the emotions
and reasoning faculty constitute life. But in ancient
India there was another factor which was very promi-
nent and that is intuition. There is an element in Indian
poetry, which is incomprehensible
incomprehensible to a modern mind.
Therefore he calls it things in the air, things that have
nothing to do with life. There is a vast region in man's
life brought to light only through intuition and in a life
where intuition played such a great part, what we now
call our problems of life counted very little and formed