Читать книгу The Rise of Wisdom Moon - Krishna mishra - Страница 49

introduction

vation in a number of manuscripts suggests that it nevertheless enjoyed some favor in Mughal literary culture.

Given the exceptional diffusion of “The Rise of Wisdom Moon” within India, it should come as no surprise that European scholars became aware of it relatively early in the history of Sanskrit studies. The first to have referred to it appears to have been Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765–1837), whose study “On Sanskrit and Prakrit Poetry” (1808) includes a brief notice of the play.30 It is likely that John Taylor became aware of the work independently,31 however, and his account of how he first took interest in it may be cited in order to explain the interest that it aroused in European Indological circles generally during the nineteenth century:

For some months I was occupied in the perusal of books which treat [the Indian philosophical systems] in a dry didactic manner, and which, by announcing the doctrines dogmatically, instead of unfolding them in a connected series of reasoning and illustration, preserve, in many places, a degree of obscurity which it is almost im- possible to remove. The experience of these difficulties naturally induced me to enquire if there was any book which explained the [Vedanta] system by a more easy method; and having heard from several Pandits that the N’tak (Play), called the Prabodha Chandrodaya, or the Rise of the Moon of Intellect, was held in high estimation among them, and was written to establish the Ved’nta doctrines, I determined to read it, in hopes that the popular view it took of the subject would lead to a general ______

xlvii