Forest-related Writings in Indian Literature

　　ABSTRACT: Forest has been a central scene in Indian literature in the past thousands of years. From the Vedas to the epics, from Kalidasa to Tagore, India abounds with forest-related writings. Poets wrote about not only purely natural forest, but also personified forest closely linked with human life, the ashram in particular, which is both a place for religious practice and a base for education, purifying the mind of human beings and enhancing their wisdom. As a result, there has formed the sense of sāntarāsa marked by pursuing the aim of deliverance in literary aesthetic judgement. With the increasing influence of the rishi culture, habitation in forest as a way of religious practice has evolved into a way of living, becoming a symbol of plain and natural life. Such forest-related writings are the crystallization of the Indian forest civilization, containing the thinking and wisdom of original ecology.