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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1893.
BOOK NOTICE.
A SANSKRIT-ENGLISH DICTIONARY, being a have we to assume that the part which has not
practical Handbook, with Transliteration, Acoen. survived contains no words which do not occur tuation, and Etymological Analysis throughout.
in the part which has ? For this reason, though Compiled by ARTHUR A. MACDONELL, M.A., PH.D.,
I fully admit its practical convenience in a work Corpus Christi College, (Deputy) Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford. London,
like the present, I feel compelled to utter a proLongmans, Green & Co., 1893.
test against a fashion, if I may so term it, which I cannot do better than commence by quoting is coming to the front, of treating with too much the first words of the preface of this excellent book.
distrust the works of the oldest Indian Lexico. The aim of the present work is to satisfy, within graphers and Grammarians. I maintain that the compass of a comparatively bandy volume, all a complete Sanskrit dictionary should contain the practical wants not only of learners of Sanskrit, all words given in native dictionaries, whether but also of scholars for purposes of ordinary found in literature or not, for one never knows reading." It will appear from what follows that when & certain word will not be required by this modest aim has been completely arrived at.
the student. Moreover, many of these unquotDr. Macdonell has followed the newer school able words may be found most useful to the of Sanskritists, of whom Professor Whitney is comparative philologist, whether he compare the most prominent leader, in abandoning native Sanskrit with other Aryan languages, or with authorities, and confining himself to words modern Indian languages, and even when he which can be quoted from actual literature. endeavours to study the life history of Sanskrit There is much to be said for this standpoint, and itself. To take an example from the field of no doubt it supplies a convenient hard and fast comparative philology with which I am most principle for the selection of words,-a principle familiar. There is a Hindi word agárs, meaning too, which, in a work like the present, meant "sugar-cane sprouts," the derivation of which more for Sanskrit students than for comparative would be a mystery to the student, who had only a philologists, stands the test of practical useful lexicon based on the theory of the new school to ness. At the same time, with every respect for guide him. The preservation of the g shows that the learned scholars who have adopted it, I feel the word must have come through a Prakrit form bound to protest against it, as being based on a containing either a double gg or a g protected by false assumption. Even assuming that the prin a nasal. This would refer us to a Sanskrit form ciple is a sound one, it is impossible to carry it angdrikd, but no such word is to be found in out thoroughly at the present day. For until Dr. Macdonell's dictionary, as it is not quotable every Sanskrit work in existence has been made from literature. A reference, however, to the accessible to scholars, and has been indexed, it older dictionaries, shows that the Indian lexicois impobeible to say whether any word suggested graphers did give a word angdrikd, meaning for insertion in a dictionary, or any form sug. "sugar-cane sprouts." Here we have a direct gested for insertion in a grammar is quotable or proof that the old lexicographers were right, and not. But putting that point to one side, it is that the writer of a complete Sanskrit dictionary a fallacy to assume that the portion of Sanskrit would not err in including it. But this word is literature of which we have existing remains not only a help to the student of modern Indian contains the omne scibile of the language. I languages. It is a help to the student of Sanskrit believe that the greatest European Sanskrit itself. It is one of the many instances of false scholar will be the first to confess that in many etymologies which occur in that language, and is a particulars his knowledge of Sanskrit is very small valuable example of the way in which the founders beside that of scholars like Hêmachandra or the of Sanskrit (as distinct from the Vedic language) authors of the Dhdtupatha. The latter may, no helped out the paucity of a traditional priests' doubt, be sometimes mistaken, but I should not language of the schools, and made it available for dream of doubting the existence of a word men- the use of the forum, by borrowing words from tioned by them, merely because it did not occur the vernaculars current at the time of the birth in known literature, unless some cogent argument of profane Sanskpit learning. They took these were advanced for showing that they were wrong. Praksit (I use the word for want of a better term) Besides, only a small portion of the whole of words and worked back from them to what they Sansksit literature has survived, and what right considered must have been the original word as
1 For reasons which it is unnecessary to quote here, there is no doubt that the PrAkrit word was aggaadia (i.6., agra, with pleonastic ada and ikd). This is, as a
matter of letters, posible corruption of angariki, but is certainly not derived from that word.
