must have. by far the most aid from Delbrück. in his Altindisches Verbum and his various syntactical contributions. Former pupils of my own. Prof. Avery and Dr. Edgren, have also helped me. in connection with this subject and with others. in a way and measure that calls for public acknowledgment. In respect to the important matter of the declension in the earliest language. I have made great use of the elaborate paper in the Journ. Am. Or. Soe. printing contemporaneously with this work. and used by me almost. but not quite. to the end of the subject by my former pupil Prof. Lanman; my treatment of it is founded on his. My manifold obligations to my own teacher. Prof. Weber of Berlin. also require to be mentioned: among other things. I owe to him the use of his copies of certain unpublished texts of the Brahmana period, not otherwise accessible to me: and he was kind enough to look through with me my work in its inchoate condition. favoring me with valuable suggestions. For this last favor I have likewise to thank Prof. Delbrück-who, moreover, has taken the trouble to glance over for a like purpose the greater part of the proof-sheets of the grammar, as they came from the press. To Dr. L. Schröder is due whatever use I have been able to make unfortunately a very imperfect one of the important Matriayani-Sanhita.

Of the deficiencies of my work I am. I think, not less fully aware than any critic of it, even the severest, is likely to be. Should it be found to answer its intended purpose well enough to come to another edition, my endeavor will be to improve and complete it: and I shall be grateful for any corrections or suggestions which may aid me in making it a more efficient help to the study of the Sanskrit language and literature.

GOTHA. July 1879.

W. D. W.

INTRODUCTION.

BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE INDIAN LITERATURE.

It seems desirable to give here such a sketch of the history of Indian literature as shall show the relation to one another of the different periods and forms of the language treated in the following grammar, and the position of the works there quoted.

The name "Sanskrit" (samskṛta, 1087 d. adorned, elaborated, perfected'), which is popularly applied to the whole ancient and sacred language of India. belongs more properly only to that dialect which, regulated and established by the labors of the native grammarians, has led for the last two thousand years or more an artificial life, like that of the Latin during most of the same period in Europe, as the written and spoken means of communication of the learned and priestly caste; and which even at the present day fills that office. It is thus distinguished, on the one hand, from the later and derived dialects as the Prakrit, forms of language which have datable monuments from as early as the third century before Christ, and which are represented by inscriptions and coins, by the speech of the uneducated characters in the Sanskrit dramas (see below), and by a limited literature; the Pali, a Prakritic dialect which became the sacred language of Buddhism in Farther India, and is

still in service there as such; and yet later and more altered tongues forming the transition to the languages of Modern India. And, on the other hand, it is distinguished, but very much less sharply and widely, from the older dialects or forms of speech presented in the canonical literature, the Veda and Brahmana.

This fact, of the fixation by learned treatment of an authorized mode of expression, which should thenceforth be used according to rule in the intercourse of the educated, is the cardinal one in Indian linguistic history; and as the native grammatical literature has determined the form of the language, so it has also to a large extent determined the grammatical treatment of the language by European scholars.

Much in the history of the learned movement is still obscure, and opinions are at variance even as to points of prime consequence. Only the concluding works in the development of the grammatical science have been preserved to us; and though they are evidently the perfected fruits of a long series of learned labors, the records of the latter are lost beyond recovery. The time and the place of the creation of Sanskrit are unknown; and as to its occasion, we have only our inferences and conjectures to rely upon. It seems, however, altogether likely that the grammatical sense of the ancient Hindus was awakened in great measure by their study of the traditional sacred texts, and by their comparison of its different language with that of contemporary use. It is certain that the grammatical study of those texts çukhās, lit'ly 'branches, phonetic and other, was zealously and effectively followed in the Brahmanic schools; this is attested by our possession of a number of phonetico-grammatical treatises, prātiçākhyas (prati çākhām, ‘belonging to each several text, one having for subject each principal Vedic text, and noting all its peculiarities of form; these, both by the depth and exactness of their own researches and by the number of authorities which they quote, speak plainly of a lively scientific activity continued during a long time.

What part, on the other hand, the notice of differ

ences between the correct speech of the learned and the altered dialects of the vulgar may have borne in the same movement is not easy to determine; but it is not customary that a language has its proper usages fixed by rule until the danger is distinctly felt of its undergoing corruption.

The labors of the general school of Sanskrit grammar reached a climax in the grammarian Panini, whose text-book, containing the facts of the language cast into the highly artful and difficult form of about four thousand algebraicformula-like rules (in the statement and arrangement of which brevity alone is had in view, at the cost of distinctness and unambiguousness, became for all after time the authoritative, almost sacred, norm of correct speech. Respecting his period, nothing really definite and trustworthy is known; but he is with much probability held to have lived some time (two to four centuries) before the Christian era. He has had commentators in abundance, and has undergone at their hands some measure of amendment and completion; but he has not been overthrown or superseded. The chief and most authoritative commentary on his work is that called the Mahabhashya, 'great comment', in which Katyayana's strictures on his rules are examined and discussed by Patanjali.

A language, even if not a vernacular one, which is in tolerably wide and constant use for writing and speaking, is. of course, kept in life principally by direct tradition, by communication from teacher to scholar and the study and imitation of existing texts, and not by the learning of grammatical rules; yet the existence of grammatical authority, and especially of a single one, deemed infallible and of prescriptive value, could not fail to exert a very strong regulative influence, leading to the avoidance more and more of what was, even if lingering in use, inconsistent with his teachings, and also, in the constant reproduction of texts, to the gradual effacement of whatever they might contain that was unapproved. Thus the whole more modern literature of India has been Paninized, so to speak, pressed into the mould prepared by him and his school. What are the

limits of the artificiality of this process is not yet known. The attention of special students of the Hindu grammar and the subject is so intricate and difficult that the number is exceedingly small of those who have mastered it sufficiently to have a competent opinion on such general matters) has been hitherto mainly directed toward determining what the Sanskrit according to Panini really is, toward explaining the language from the grammar. And, naturally enough, in India, or wherever else the leading object is to learn to speak and write the language correctly that is, as authorized by the grammarians that is the proper course to pursue. This, however, is not the way really to understand the language. The time must soon come, or it has come already, when the endeavor shall be instead to explain the grammar from the language; to test in all details, so far as shall be found possible, the reason of Pānini's rules (which contain not a little that seems problematical, or even sometimes perverse; to determine what and how much genuine usage he had everywhere as foundation, and what traces may be left in the literature of usages possessing an inherently authorized character, though unratified by him.

By the term "classical" or "later" language, then, as constantly used below in the grammar, is meant the language of those literary monuments which are written in conformity with the rules of the native grammar: virtually, the whole proper Sanskrit literature. For although parts of this are doubtless earlier than Panini, it is impossible to tell just what parts, or how far they have escaped in their style the levelling influence of the grammar. The whole, too, may be called so far an artificial literature as it is written in a phonetic form (see grammar, 103) which never can have been a truly vernacular and living one. Nearly all of it is metrical: not poetic works only, but narratives, histories (so far as anything deserving that name can be said to exist, and scientific treatises of every variety, are done into verse; a prose and a prose literature except in the commentaries) hardly has an existence. Of linguistic history there is next to nothing in it all; but only a history of style, and this