Indian Antiquary Vol 18

SR No.: 032510
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 454
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 271

AUGUST, 1889.]
from the figures for the year within the century, and altogether omitting the word for 'hundred.' And in this respect I may be permitted to quote here, from page 166 of Professor Eggeling's Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS. of the India Office, as an even more instructive example, a date of about the same time and from the same part of India, which runs as follows:
svasti samvat pañchadasa 15 asitau 80 pravarttamâne uttarayanê(nê) śri-surye grishma-ritau mahâmangalya-pradê Jyê(jyai)shtha-masê asita-pakshê dvâdasa ghatika-paryanta-paurṇamasi tadanantarapratipadâyâm tithau Bhrigu-varé ady=êha Simhadrada-sthânê..
BOOK NOTICES.
BOOK
A GRAMMAR OF THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE, by F. KIELHORN, Ph.D., C.I.E., Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Göttingen. Third edition, revised and enlarged. Bombay Government Central Book Depot; Bombay, 1888. Royal 8vo.; pp. xv. 286.
The study of Sanskrit Grammar may be profitably regarded, as having like that, for example, of Euclid, an interest and educational importance quite apart from its practical bearing. The Paniniyan system, though no critical student would venture to hold it up as an ideal, is in itself so marvellous a monument of human ingenuity and withal so characteristic of India, that no real and scientific student of the speech of the country can entirely dispense with a knowledge of it. Its influence indeed extended, as was so ably shown by the late Dr. Burnell, throughout the Peninsula and beyond the confines of Aryan speech. The modern Indian student, for whomthe present work is principally intended, may be regarded as occupying a place midway between the superficial learner in Europe for merely philological purposes, and the old-fashioned Indian sishya who seems to have spent years in committing to memory rules, of which he probably understood at first even less than our own Eton students of their old Latin grammar.
The general plan adopted by Prof. Kielhorn has been, to adapt the rules of the chief Native grammarians to the requirements of teaching after Western methods. This has involved the inclusion of a considerable number of forms not actually occurring in Sanskrit literature. For all this, the grammar is not to be regarded as a mere introduction to the theoretic study of grammar above referred to; but rather, as Prof. Kielhorn puts it, in introducing his chapter on Syntax, which forms a new and acceptable feature
1 And yet I well remember being set to learn this form by even a European teacher, who rendered it, by-the-by,
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i.e., omitting useless details, "in the (Vikrams) year fifteen-eighty, in the month Jyaishtha, in the dark half, on a Friday, when the full-moon tithi lasted twelve ghatikus (after sunrise) and was then followed by the first tithi (of the dark half). here at Simhodraḍa" ; corresponding (when referred to the southern Vikrama year 1580, current) to Friday, 29th May, A.D. 1523, when the full-moon tithi by Professor Jacobi's Tables ended 4 h. 28 m., and by Dr. Schram's Tables 4 h. 49 m. after mean sunrise, as near 12 ghatikus as can be expected.
Göttingen.
NOTICES.
of the present volume: "The forms... taught.. "are not learnt for their own sake, but for the use "to be made of them in the sentence." Thus recognizing, as all must do who have been privileged to hold converse with the best culture of India even of to-day, the great importance of Sanskrit as a medium of practical intercourse, Prof. Kielhorn in this work provides his readers with a book of instruction and reference to supply forms that can be justified from the main authorities still deferred to.
F. KIELHORN.
In the Chapter on Letters, spaced Roman type has been used for the more difficult forms, to great advantage. Indeed for European students it might have been well to have added it further on in the work for the more difficult paradigms, as has been done so successfully by Mr. Macdonell in his new edition of Prof. Max Müller's Grampar.
In the Declension-section, anah, beloved of grammarians, appears in full proportions, in spite of its great rarity in the classical language, and even the theoretical feminine is retained, perhaps in deference to the Indian reader's feeling of reverence for the sacredness of its meaning: but it is satisfactory, and more characteristic of the general method of the work, to note that fictions like priyachatvar, discussed by the commentators in the same passage of Panini (vii., 1, 98, 99), are excluded. In the rules for verbs, it might be of assistance to add at abular summary of the sandhi-rules, and in particular to note a case like vatsyati, where the rule for the general tenses differs from that for the special tenses.
In the rules for the insertion of i, the use of the native terms set and unit is most convenient. but European readers must, I fear, be content to envy the native memory that could learn the 100
into a monstrosity of English worthy of the original: dears-four-(having).