Ancient India: Its Language and Religions

couplets. In these vast chapters original: "cantos", featuring a labyrinth of main stories and side-plots, many generations of poets collected legends of ancient heroes. They recorded the struggles and religious penances original: "flagellations"; likely referring to the ascetic practices or "tapas" common in Hindu epics of these figures from the olden days.

The total sum of all this newly acquired knowledge was gathered into the major work of a Norwegian scholar who lived and worked in Germany: the Indian Antiquities original German: Indische Alterthumskunde by Christian Lassen.

Lassen was not among the greatest pioneers of the field, such as Franz Bopp. It must also be admitted that he often lacked that specific insight original: "sagacity" for linguistic study that can illuminate a problem even when it cannot provide a final answer. Indeed, his task was like a labor of the Danaides In Greek mythology, the Danaides were condemned to carry water in leaky jars for eternity; the author means an impossible or endless task. It was a monumental effort to explore the earliest periods of India's past when the only main sources available were the great epic poems and the Laws of Manu an ancient legal and social text of India. Even a scholar with sharper critical skills than Lassen could not have found much factual history in the hazy confusion of these legends. He had to contend with the fictional lineages of kings in the Mahabharata and the repetitive, uniform style used by the Indian epic poets original: "Hindu Virgils". This style makes the vast stretches of time they describe look exactly the same. Despite these issues, Lassen’s Antiquities—a product of tireless effort and exceptional scholarship—remains a landmark in the history of Indian studies. It combined all the research of the past and, by showing what was still missing, pointed toward new paths for future study.

However, just as the first volume of Lassen's work on the earliest periods was being published, a new movement began. This movement split the development of Indian studies into two