Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

Page 158

WRITING-ITS DEVELOPMENT
137
dead language was exclusively used. But we were not so very far from it. And the conditions as to this matter in the two continents—for India is more of a continent than a country-were more similar than is often supposed. The dead language in each case was the language used in the sacrifice. The greater credit attaching to it was largely of a religious nature. But it was also a sort of lingua franca widely understood through many countries in which many various languages were respectively the language of the people. There was a time in each case when the clergy were in great part the main custodians of the learning of the day, so that the language of the church was the most convenient language in which to appeal to a larger circle of educated people than could be reached through any one vernacular. And in each case those who first used the vernacular were the men who wished to appeal to the people, who were advocating what they deemed to be reforms.
There are, of course, differences also in these two cases. The most important of these is that, in India, the use of the vernacular came first in order of time. And one result of this was the curious dialect half-way between the vernacular and the dead language, which may be called equally well either mixed Sanskrit or mixed vernacular, according as it approximates more or less to the one or to the other. Another result was that, the vernacular being taken so early, the grammatical terminations still survived in it in a shape more or less akin to those in use in the dead language. When