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CHAPTER V.

THE DISCOVERY OF SANSKRIT.

Imperfect Classification.

S collections, the works of Hervas, of the Empress Catharine, and of Adelung were highly important; though such is the progress made in the science of language during the last fifty years, that few people would now consult them. The principle of classification which is followed in these works can hardly claim to be called scientific. Languages are arranged geographically, as the languages of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, though, at the same time, natural affinities are admitted which would unite dialects spoken at a distance of 208 degrees. Languages seemed to float about like islands on the ocean of human speech; they did not shoot together to form themselves into larger continents. This is a most critical period in the history of every science, and if it had not been for a happy accident, which, like an electric spark, caused the floating elements to crystallise into regular forms, it is more than doubtful whether the long list of languages and dialects, enumerated and described in the works of Hervas and Adelung, could long have sustained the interest of the student of languages. This electric spark was the discovery of Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Hindus.

The Language of India.

The history of the language and the dialects of India is by no means so simple and clear as was formerly supposed. The more it is studied, the more complicated it becomes. It begins with the Sanskrit of the Vedas, about 1500 B.C., though some scholars are inclined to place its beginning at a much earlier date. To me it seems that the admission of an earlier date would no doubt remove some difficulties, but that direct proof is quite impossible.

Vedic Sanskrit.

We can watch the Vedic language in three stages, that of the hymns, that of the Brâhmanas, and that of the Sûtras. Between the hymns and the Brâhmanas there must have been a complete break, and however carefully the pronunciation of the Vedic hymns may have been preserved by oral tradition, their true meaning had evidently been completely lost between the two periods. There is no such break between the Brahmanas and the Sûtras, but the language of the Sûtras has preserved but few of the old Vedic peculiarities, and does not differ much from the ordinary Sanskrit, as fixed by the rules of Pânini's grammar.

The language of the Vedic hymns must have been at one time a spoken language in the North-West of India, but it should be remembered that we know it in its poetic form only, and mostly as applied to religious subjects. Though we cannot form a clear idea how these hymns were composed, preserved, and finally collected, one thing is quite certain, that they soon assumed a sacred character, and were handed

down with the most minute care. It is equally admitted by most Sanskrit scholars who have paid attention to this subject, that they were preserved till about the third century B.C. by means of oral tradition only. When I endeavoured for the first time to establish this fact in my History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature (1859),1 I had to depend to a great extent on circumstantial evidence only. We know now, as a matter of fact, that the alphabets employed in India in the third century B.C. by Asoka, would have been totally inadequate for reducing the Vedic hymns to a written form.2 But this very ignorance of the art of writing produced a system of oral tradition of which we should have had no idea unless a full account of it had been preserved for us in the Prâtisâkhyas. No written alphabet which we know could ever have rendered the minute shades of pronunciation as detailed by the authors of the Prâtisâkhyas, no copyists could have handed down to us so accurate a representation of the Vedic hymns as we still meet with in the memory of living Srotriyas.3

1 History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 497-524, 'The Introduction of Writing.'

2 The old alphabet of the North-West has no signs for long vowels. Neither the North-Western nor the Magadha alphabet represents double consonants. The vowel ri was at first absent in both. The palatal s is absent in the old Magadha alphabet, and develops in later inscriptions. Senart, Journal Asiatique, 1886, p. 110.

3 Our best Vedic MSS. presuppose a knowledge of the rules of pronunciation as laid down in the Prâtisâkhyas, and cannot be read by us without such knowledge. Even in cases where the Devanâgarî alphabet could have expressed the more delicate varieties of pronunciation, the writers of the best MSS. are satisfied with indicating them, trusting that the reader will pronounce correctly, according to the rules of Sikshâ phonetics).

It is clear, however, that this scholastic study of the Veda became a retarding element in the growth of the ancient language. Vedic Sanskrit became hieratic and unchangeable, and may thus have imparted even to the spoken language of the higher classes an amount of grammatical fixity which no language possesses in its natural state. We see indeed a small progress between the poetic hymns and the prose Brahmanas, and again between the Brahmanas and the Sûtras, but the grammar of the Sûtras, with the exception of some surviving Vedic forms, remained the grammar of Sanskrit, as fixed once for all by the grammatical rules of Pânini, whose probable, though by no means certain, date is the fourth century B.C. All Sanskrit literature after Pânini is under the iron sway of that grammarian. The literary language is no longer allowed to grow or to decay, but whatever contravenes his rules is ipso facto a blunder.1 This applies to Kâlidâsa as much as to those who continue to write and speak Sanskrit to the present day.

Asoka's Inscriptions.

So far the history of Sanskrit seems clear and intelligible. But as soon as the real history of India begins, in the third century B.C., all is changed. We then perceive that the Vedic and the Pâninean Sanskrit form but one straight channel, and that by its side there run numerous streams of living speech, which are as far removed from Vedic and even from Pâninean Sanskrit as the Romanic dialects are from

1 See M. M., The Renaissance of Sanskrit Literature, in India, what can it teach us?' pp. 281-366.

Latin. This fact cannot be doubted, for the inscriptions of Asoka are truly historical documents, contemporary witnesses of the language as then spoken in India; and in India, where historical documents are so scarce, their value, not only for chronology and political history, but for the study of the historical growth of the language of the country is immense.

I call the inscriptions of Asoka the only truly historical documents of the growth of the language of India for two reasons; first, because they are contemporary; secondly, because they are not written according to grammatical rules.

Grammatical and Ungrammatical Prâkrits.

If we call all Indian dialects which descend from Sanskrit, Prâkrit, we must distinguish between two classes, the grammatical and the ungrammatical Prâkrits, which may be called Apa bhramsas. By grammatical Prâkrits I mean those which, like Sanskrit, are written according to the rules of grammarians, such as Pâli, the Prâkrit of the Buddhist scriptures, the Gaina Mâgadhî of the Gaina scriptures, and the Brahmanic Prâkrits, the so-called Mahârâshtrî, Saurasenî, and Mâgadhî. The last-named Prâkrits were used for popular poetry, such as the Saptasataka of Hâla (467 A. D.), and for academic poetry, such as the Setubandha, the Gaudavadha, and, more particularly, for dramatic plays.

Grammatical Prakrits.

Vararuki, the oldest Prâkrit grammarian, treats of one classical Prâkrita, which in one place he calls

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