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XXII. In what degree was Sanskrit a Spoken Language?
An essay on the development of the Sanskrit Language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
There must have been in ancient India three thousand years ago, as there are in the India of to-day, many languages and many dialects of these languages. Unfortunately, there was no Linguistic Survey and no Dr.- Grierson in those days ; and of all of these save one — the language of the earliest Aryan settlers in the north-western corner of India — we have to say, “ their memorial is perished with them.”
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1904
References
page 435 note 1 For a later period—the period beginning about 300 B.C.—we are more fortunate in possessing records of several other members of the Indian group of the same Aryan or Indo-European family. Between these languages there is a strong family resemblance, and their intimate connection with the earliest recorded language cannot be doubted. At the same time, it would not be strictly accurate to say of most of them that they were derived from this earliest recorded language. They were derived rather from earlier spoken languages which have passed away without record.
page 436 note 1 p. 150.
page 437 note 1 Edict VII; v. V. A. Smith, Aśoka, p. 155.
page 437 note 2 Bühler, Ind. Ant., 1891, p. 361. Professor Bhandarkar, however, denies that the Ājīvikas were Brahmans, v. JBBRAS., 1901, p. 399.
page 437 note 3 Bühler in ASWI. v, p. 60.
page 437 note 4 Nāsik and Karle Inscrr. in ASWI. iv.
page 438 note 1 E.g. coins of the Audumbara king Dharaghoṣa, v. Indian Coins, § 43, pl. iii, 8.
page 440 note 1 Franke, Pāli und Sanskrit, p. 54.
page 441 note 1 Linguistically the Sanskrit of the Brāhmaṇa period is to be compared to the Greek of the Classical period, when great writers show the most marked individuality in language and style.
page 441 note 2 Why Professor Rhys Davids (Buddhism, 1903, p. 254), while allowing that the language of the Vedic hymns represents in literary form the contemporary spoken language, denies that this is true of the productions of the later Vedic or Brāhmaṇa period, I cannot understand. He admits that the language of this later Vedic period shows “traces of development.” But this is precisely the criterion of a living language, and of a living language unfixed yet by the strict rules of the grammarians. The mediæval Latin in Europe, and the Pali of the commentaries, to which he compares it, do not change in the same way. Their form is definitely fixed. Their inflexions remain the same throughout. Slight variations in their vocabularies, slight differences in the meanings and uses of words, are almost the only marks by which the productions of different periods can be distinguished.
page 442 note 1 It is always interesting to compare the parallel developments in the civilizations of ancient Greece and India. For the history of Greek grammar, v. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, vol. i, p. 88.
page 447 note 1 v. Wackernagel, Altindische Grammatik, p. xli.
page 448 note 1 Collitz, Sammlung d. griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, i, p. 133 f.
page 449 note 1 pp. 55 ff.
page 449 note 2 Ibid., p. 54.
page 449 note 3 Ibid., pp. 13, 58.
page 450 note 1 Buddhist India, p. 316.
page 452 note 1 Wackernagel, Altind. Gram., p. xxiii.
page 452 note 2 p. 137.
page 452 note 2 p. 128.
page 453 note 1 Professor Rhys Davids, indeed, seems to ignore the fact that there are many Sanskrit works which certainly belong to this period.
page 454 note 1 p. 154.
page 455 note 1 p. 148.
page 456 note 1 The Sanskrit drama, however, belongs to a period, beginning probably about 400 A.D., for which the existence of Sanskrit as a cultivated spoken language is scarcely disputed. Professor Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, p. 154, admits that Sanskrit “ from the fourth and fifth centuries onwards became the literary lingua franca for all India.”