Tulsi Prajna 2002 04

SR No.: 524611
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Shanta Jain, Jagatram Bhattacharya
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
Publication Year: 2002
Total Pages: 122
Language: Hindi
Classification: Magazine, India_Tulsi Prajna, & India
File Size: 6 MB

Page 108

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS*
-- Mahamahopadhyaya Haraprasad Sastri
M.A., C.I.E. F.A.S.B.
My friends in Calcutta have asked me to take charge of the Sanskrit and Prakrit Section of this Conference. They should have selected a better man for the purpose, one who has made the study of the languages and literatures his life work. The subject is too vast for one man. The languages themselves are a hard study not to mention the vast number of works written in them. The time at my disposal is very short, and the notice I received of my appointment was not adequate to do full justice even to one literature or one language, and I have to say something on two languages and two literatures. Under the circumstances, fail I must, but I have faith in the forbearance of my audience.
There were scholars in the early part of the 19th century who thought Sanskrit to be a forgery of the Brahmins, and there were many in that century who thought dramatic Prakrit to be a forgery. In the Calcutta University, questions are still asked in higher examinations whether Sanskrit or the Prakrit was over a spoken language.
Happily such ideas have not taken a great hold on scholars generally, and there is a strong desire to investigate the origin of the languages derived from the Indo-Aryan language of the Vedas. So long as the Aryan Society was confined to the Rsis and their families of seltled Aryans, the Vedic language did not change much. But after some centuries of Aryan settlement in the Antardeśa, that is, the country lying between Allahabad and Lahore, there came
Published in the Procedings and Translations of the Second Oriental Conference in Calcutta, January 281h to February Ist, 1922.
Tapet UE 3T09 - F
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