the aggregate of Indian literature in classical Sanskrit. During the first millennium A.D., Sanskrit literature was the most important literature in India. More broadly, Sanskrit literature has often been understood to include works in Vedic, epic Sanskrit, and the Prakrits. Its significance declined as national literatures were created and new literatures emerged that were common literatures for various peoples of India.
As the joint literary experience of the peoples of India, Sanskrit literature absorbed the folkloric and literary traditions of these peoples. Its earliest representatives were the poet and playwright Ashvaghosha (second century) and the playwright Bhasa (c. fourth century). From the middle and end of the first millennium date many works of world importance, including the dramas of Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Sudraka, and Visakhadat-ta; the lyrics of Amaru and Bhartrhari; and the prose of Vasu-bandhu, Bana, and Dandin. There were also folkloric works in literary form, such as Brhatkatha, Panchatantra, Vetala-pancavimshati, and Sukasaptati, as well as satiric farces. Sanskrit literature not only reflected the entire contradiction of the social and cultural development of the peoples of India in antiquity and the early Middle Ages but also combined aristocratic tendencies with democratic tendencies linked to progressive currents of social thought. It also developed a theory of literature and aesthetics; theoreticians included Bhamaha, Ananda-vardhana, and Abhinavagupta.
Sanskrit literature occupies an important place in the history of world literature. Panchatantra, Twenty-five Stories of the Ve-tala, Thirty-two Stories of the King’s Throne, and Seventy Stories Related by the Parrot were assimilated and reworked in the literatures of various peoples, including Europeans. La Fontaine and J. W. von Goethe were among the writers to rework themes from Sanskrit literature. In the mid-17th century the Calvinist missionary A. Rogerius published a Dutch translation of the verses of Bhartrhari together with a short biography of the writer. Sanskrit literature interested J. Herder, G. Forster, and Goethe, who highly regarded its accomplishments and made it accessible to European readers for the first time. F. von Schle-gel, A. von Schlegel, and F. Rückert, all of Germany, made a great contribution to the popularization and scholarly interpretation of Sanskrit literature, as did other representatives of the romantic school. The views of G. W. F. Hegel, F. W. J. von Schelling, and A. Schopenhauer helped crystallize Western opinion on Sanskrit literature. Wider knowledge of the history of India enabled A. Weber of Germany to have a more historical understanding of Sanskrit literature. This understanding was developed in the works of A. Macdonnell, R. Frazer, and A. B. Keith of Great Britain, M. Winternitz and J. Hertel of Germany, and H. von Glasenapp of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The struggle for national independence and the emergence of national consciousness among the peoples of India stimulated the work of Indian scholars in the area of Sanskrit literature. These scholars included R. G. Bhandarkar, S. N. Dasgupta, S. K. De, D. D. Kosambi, and V. Raghavan. An important contribution to the study of Sanskrit literature was made by pre-revolutionary Russian Indology and Indology of the Soviet period.
I. D. SEREBRIAKOV