presenting the Eastern Gaudian, as yet undivided into local dialects. Later poets write each in his own dialect; Kabir (fifteenth century) in Western Hindî, Tulsî Dâs (1541-1624) in Eastern Hindî; Kabi Kankan in Bengâlî, Upendro Bhanj in Uriyâ, Tukarâm in Marâthî, Narsingh Mahta in Gujarâtî.1

Dr. Hörnle 2 has collected some evidence to show that the two divisions of the modern vernaculars, are derived from grammatical Prâkrits. The Northern and Western from Saurasenî, the Southern and Eastern from Magadhî. That evidence is naturally scanty, but it is valuable as showing certain tendencies preserved even in the literary Prâkrits, which appear again in the modern vernaculars. Vernaculars, however, spring from vernaculars, never from literary languages, and it is to the vernaculars or Apabhramsas of the North-West and South-East of India that we must look for the true origin of the dialects now spoken in India, and not to the language of the Vedas, the Tipitaka, Sakuntalâ, nor to the grammars of Pânini, Kâtyâyana, or Vararuki.

Sinhalese.

There is one other vernacular which has now been clearly proved to be Prâkritic, viz. that of Ceylon, the Sinhalese. It is curious that such scholars as Colebrooke, Stevenson and others should have treated that language as a Dravidian dialect. I believe I was the first who in 1854 claimed it as a member of the Aryan family, a view which has since been fully confirmed

1 Hörnle, Comparative Grammar, p. xxxv.

2 Ibid. pp. xxvi-xxx.

by the labours of D'Alwis, Childers, Kuhn, and others. Dr. Goldschmidt tried to prove that the language of Ceylon shares some characteristics in common with the Magadha Prâkrit, but the exact relationship between Sinhalese and any other of the Prâkritic dialects requires still further investigation. Neither Beames nor Hörnle have treated it in their comparative grammars.

In its oldest form the language of Ceylon is called Elu, which has been shown by D'Alwis1 to be a corruption of Sinhala. This language is believed to have been brought to Ceylon by a colony from Lâla, a district of Mâgadhî, at the time of Buddha's death, and this tradition is confirmed by the fact that, according to Childers, Sinhalese agrees with Pâli when Pâli differs from the other Prâkrits. The old Sinhalese or Elu differs from the modern no more than the AngloSaxon from English. The modern Sinhalese has, however, evolved many new grammatical forms and admitted a large number of Sanskrit words.

If we may trust the Mahâvansa, Sinhalese must have been distinct from Pâli as early as the third century B. C., for at that time it is said that Mahinda translated the Buddhist Arthakathâs or commentaries, not, as Weber says, the text of the Tipitaka, from Pâli into Sinhalese, while in the fifth century A. D. Buddhaghosha translated Mahinda's Sinhalese translation back into Pâli. From that time, possibly from the date of Mahinda's translation, the changes in the written language of Ceylon seem to have been inconsiderable.2

Elu books are said to date from the fifth and sixth

1 Sidath Sangarawa, p. xxxii.

2 See Childers, Notes on the Sinhalese Language, 1873.

centuries A.D. By the researches of Dr. P. Goldschmidt and Dr. E. Müller inscriptions have lately been discovered in Ceylon going back to the first and second centuries B. c.1

1

Report on Inscriptions, by P. Goldschmidt and Dr. E. Müller ; printed by Order of Government, Colombo, 1876-1879.

CHAPTER VI.

SANSKRIT AS KNOWN OUTSIDE INDIA.

E

We have seen that the history of the language of

India and its various dialects is more complete in its successive periods than that of almost any other language.

Yet such was the surprise created by the discovery of this language and by its startling similarity to the classical languages of Greece and Rome, that some of the most enlightened spirits of the last century declined to believe in its historical reality, and accused the wily Brahmans of having forged it to deceive their conquerors. No one gave stronger expression to that opinion than Dugald Stewart in his Conjectures concerning the Origin of the Sanskrit. At present this controversy has no more than an historical interest. Still it may be useful to show how the existence of Sanskrit, as a real language, might have been proved by independent testimony, namely by the accounts left us by the four nations who successively came in contact with India, the Jews, the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Arabs. Besides, though it is true that we do not want their evidence any longer to prove that Sanskrit was a real, not a

forged language, that testimony will nevertheless be useful, because in the absence of anything like history or chronology in India, the accounts left us at different periods by Jews, Greeks, Chinese, and Arabs will continue to serve, like broad longitudinal lines, to impart a certain order and regularity to the ill-defined map of Indian language and literature.

I place the Jewish testimonies first because, though the date of the Books of Kings, in which commercial relations between Phenicia, Palestine, and India are alluded to, may be uncertain, it is certainly anterior to that of the Greek testimonies which will follow after.

Jewish Testimonies.

Let it be remembered then that in the hymns of the Veda, which are the oldest literary compositions in Sanskrit, the geographical horizon of the poets is, for the greater part, limited to the north-west of India. There are very few passages in which any allusions to the sea or the sea-coast occur, whereas the Snowy Mountains, and the rivers of the Panjâb, and the scenery of the Upper Ganges valley, are familiar objects to the ancient bards. There is no doubt, in fact, that the people who spoke Sanskrit came into India from the north-west, and gradually extended their sway towards the south-east. Now, at the time of Solomon, it can be proved that Sanskrit was spoken at least as far south as the mouth of the Indus.

The navy-ships which Solomon made at Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom, are well known to Old Testament students. That fleet was manned by the servants of