AN HISTORICAL SKETCH

OF

SANSCRIT LITERATURE.

ORIGIN, ANTIQUITY, AND NAME OF THE SANSCRIT

LANGUAGE.

Or the origin of the Sanscrit language, the parent stock of nearly all those now in use among the followers of Brahma, nothing is known with certainty but that it is lost in the gloom of remote antiquity. Historical data are entirely wanting respecting the first peopling of India; hence numerous conjectures have been formed concerning the introduction of the Sanscrit into the plains of Hindoostan.

It is the opinion of Klaproth, that, at a very remote period, Japhetic tribes from the north-west settled in these provinces, into which they carried their own language, the stock of the Sanscrit, and blended with it, or rather absorbed into it, at least in the northern districts of the peninsula, the dialects of the aborigines whom they found there".

a On the origin of the different written characters of the ancient world, by Klaproth, in Asiatic Journal, April, 1832. See also Edinb. Review, vol. xiii, p. 369.

B

Some learned men, on the contrary, would derive the Sanscrit from the Semitic family of languages. This opinion, however, is now very generally exploded. The alphabet, as M. Klaproth observes, in reply to Dr. Schleiermacher and others, bears no affinity to those of Semitic origin; but differs from them altogether, as well in the shape and sound of the letters as in their systems of arrangement. Bopp also very pertinently remarks, that whilst in the Semitic family a variation of vowels is of no etymological consequence, in Sanscrit and its cognate dialects such a change totally alters the force of the word: a sufficient proof of there being little or no connection between them".

According to Colebrooke, Sanscrit derives its origin (and some steps of its progress may even now be traced) from a primeval tongue, which was gradually refined in various climates, and became Sanscrit in India, Pahlavi in Persia, and Greek on the shores of the Mediterranean. Many scholars, however, in the very highest rank of learning, trace the origin of this language in the Zend. Among these are Sir William Jones, the father of Indian learning, Paulinus a St. Bartholomæo, and the learned Dr. Leyden.

The Zend, however, would seem to be rather a twin sister of the Sanscrit than its parent; and, according to Hammer, a celebrated oriental scholar, the affinity is so close, that out of ten Zend words, six or seven will be found to be pure Sanscrit. Here too may be noticed an observation cited by Langlès, in

b See Klaproth, 1. c. and Asiatic Journal, January, 1832, p. 2.

c Asiatic Researches, vol. vii, p. 199.

d Works, vol. i, p. 26.

e In his tract, De Affinitate Linguæ Samscrdamicæ cum Zendica.

f Wiener Jahrbuch der Liter. 1818, ii, s. 275, in which he follows Sir William Jones.

the French translation of the Asiatic Researches, from Mohammed Fàny, a Persian writer, "that in very early times the Persians and the Indians formed but one people, and had but one religion, government, and, probably, but one language ;" an assertion which Othm. Frank does not fail to quote in his Comment. de Persidis Lingua et Genio.

Later writers on this subject (colonel Vans Kennedy and others) award a still higher honour to the Sanscrit language, and make it the common parent of the Greek, and Latin, and Teutonic languages; and, consequently, of the English, French, German, and all the other modern ones to which these have given birth. They conceive Babylonia to have been the original seat of the Sanscrit, and that Asia Minor was peopled at an early period by a race from that country, whose language became the common parent of the Greek and Latin, and of the Thracian, now extinct, but from which descended the Teutonic languages".

A writer also in the Edinb. Rev. No. cii, sums up his observations on this subject by saying, "We are free to confess that the result of our enquiries has been, to produce a conviction in our minds that the affinities known to subsist between the Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, and German languages, are perfectly irreconcileable with any other supposition than that of their having all been derived from a common source, or primitive language, spoken by a people of whom the Indians, Greeks, Latins, and Germans, were equally the descendants". It is certain that intimations are given by ancient historians, that the Babylonians were in possession of a sacred language; but it seems almost impossible that this could have been the Sanscrit in its

b Colonel Vans Kennedy, On the Origin and Affinity of the Languages of Asia and Europe, 4to. p. 34 and 122. See also Raffles's History of p. 369.

present polished state; and Col. Kennedy, together with Klaproth and many others, believes that it was introduced into Hindoostan by Japhetic tribes from the north-west, where it gradually obtained its high state of perfection. According to Langlès, it seems most likely that it was brought into Hindoostan from Western Asia, probably from Bactriana, by the Magians, whom Darius expelled the Persian empire.

But whatever may have been the origin of this language, all writers are agreed in ascribing to it a very high antiquity. Volney calls the Sanscrit, that language of a Scythian race which even the Egyptian acknowledged as its legitimate rival in antiquity'. And, extravagant as may be considered the assertions of Mr. Halhed, they still serve to prove the very remote antiquity of this language and its literature; so that few, after a careful examination of the subject, and leaving the inspired writings out of the question, will withhold their assent to his assertion, "that the world does not now contain annals of more indisputable antiquity than those delivered down by the ancient Brahmins "."

m

The whole character of the Hindoo nation and its institutions bears testimony in favour of this remote antiquity of their language. Their religion and laws, their mythology and science, all carry us back to times beyond the reach of history; while their magnificent but ruined temples, appear to be the work of no

i Tradition makes the Sanscrit to have travelled from the north to the south of India; hence it acquired in India the name of Vaddamozhi, the language of the north. Adelung.

* Revue Encyclop. 1820, Août, p. 330.

In his Lettre sur l'Alphabet Phénicien, in the Revue Encyclop. vol. ii, Livr. 6, p. 511.

m See Halhed's preface to his translation of the Code of Hindoo Laws; and the preface to his Grammar of the Bengal Language; and Q. Crawford's Researches concerning India, vol. ii, p. 181–183, in which the objections to the high antiquity of the Sanscrit are stated and answered.

superstition more modern than that of Egypt or Assyria".

The century before the Christian era is regarded as one of the Augustan ages of this language, which, having been progressively refined, became fixed in the classic writings of many elegant poets, most of whom are supposed to have flourished about this period. It is now become almost a dead language; and, what may seem rather extraordinary, its numerous inflections, which are more anomalous than those of any other language, and still more so in the obsolete dialect of the ancient vedas than in the polished style of the classic poets, have led many persons to believe that it was constructed by the concerted efforts of a few priests, who set themselves about inventing a new language. The rules have been supposed to be anterior to the practice; but the supposition is gratuitous: in Sanscrit, as in every other known tongue, grainmarians have not invented etymology, but have only contrived rules to teach what was already established by approved usage.

All the enquiries, however, respecting this language prove that it must have obtained fixed grammatical inflections at a very early period. The opinion just cited, and repeated by Crawford in his Researches concerning Ancient and Modern India, that the number of its declensions and conjugations, and the complication of its rules, must have prevented it from having ever been in use as a national language, is opposed to all experience respecting the formation of languages. The Sanscrit was certainly at one time the language of the greater part of India, especially

n Edinburgh Review, vol. v. p. 289.

• Colebrooke on the Sanscrit and Pracrit Languages, in Asiatic Researches, vol. vii, p. 199.