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AUGUST, 1893.]
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ought to have been, and each departure from his posing him to have lived a hundred years earlier or grammar is recorded and classified. Omitting a hundred years later, in the matter of the growth irregularities which are noticed by Påņini himself, of a language really makes very little difference. as belonging to the Chhandas or older (i.e. before Now we know that the Vedic hymns, which, in him) language, the following is the number of their original forms, were in the vernacular languforms found to be grammatically false according age of the people who first sang them, existed to his rules, out of the thousand examined in certainly some centuries before Panini. The each work,-(a) 6, (6) 27, (c) 41, (d) 37. From older Brahmanas, equally certainly were comthese statistics, and from a consideration of the posed some centuries before Pånini's time, and nature of the irregularities in each case, he comes finally, the Sutras were composed about his time. to the following conclusions :
On the other hand, the Asoka Inscriptions, which 1. That Panini is nearest in time to the were in the vernacular language of the Court of Grihyasútras.
Magadha, were fifty, or at most a hundred and 2. That both the Aitaréya Brahmana and the
fifty, years later than Pånini. Now, taking Brihadaranyaka Upanishad certainly belong to
Pånini's own time as the standpoint and looking
backwards and forward, what do we see P Look. a time earlier than his.
ing backward, through a long vista of centuries we 3. That the Bhagavadgitu certainly belongs
see the hymns of the Vedas, the searchings of the to & time later than his.
Brahmanas and the teachings of the Satras, all In his fourth chapter the author deals with the couched in what is practically one and the same Panini's relation to the language of India; with- language. The oldest hymns of the Rig Vedio out a clear comprehension of which it is im- have ancient forms, and it may be argued that we possible to solve the problem of the extent to should exclude them,-be it so. Between the oldest which Sanskrit was a living speech. Tbe Brühmaņas and Panini at least one century must author first gives a brief résumé of the various have elapsed, and the language of the Brůhmanas propositions on this point which have hitherto and the language of Påņini are identical. Bebeen advanced, in which I may notice that hetween Panmi and Asoka, certainly not more than omits to mention Senart's arguments, contained a century and a half elapsed, and the language of in his essays on the Inscriptions of Piyadasi. Asoka is as different from that treated by Pånini, His own opinion is that Påņini taught the as Italian is from Latin. Nay, this was the case, language spoken in India at his time, that although the people of Asoka's time had Panini's the Sanskrit which he taught was, syntactically, Grammar before them as a guide, and though the practically identical with that of the Brilmunas Asoka Inscriptions show plain signs of a striving and of the Satras, and that in grammar, it after style more in accordance with the teachings of only differed from the Brühmanas by the the Sanskrit schools than the existing vernacular absence of a few ancient forms, most of which of the day. Aboka, it is true, lived in Eastern were specially noted by him as Vedic peculiarities, Hindustan, and Panini in the North-west, but that and from the Sútras by the omission to notice can be of little weight. It is impossible to certain loosely used forms, such as those which suppose that, while language developed along exist in every language beside the stricter ones its natural lines in the east, that developmeat enjoined by grammar.
remained arrested in the west. In suggesting that Påņini taught in his gram- Those, therefore, who maintain that Panini mar the Aryan language, in the form in which it wrote a grammar of the language generally was at the time generally spoken even by the spoken at his time must account for two things. educated in India, I think Dr. Liebich goes too Before his time, for at least a hundred years! far. That Panini, in his grammar, illustrated the vernacular language remained, fixed, una language which was spoken at the time by changed, in a state of arrested development. After, some persons, and probably by himself, is pos. bis time, during at most a century and a half, sible, and may be allowed; but I, for one, can- and possibly during only half a century, the not admit that that language was in Panini's same vernacular language underwent a course of time the general spoken language of India, or decay or development, as great as the developeven of North-Western India. One fact alone ment of Latin into Italian. This, too, during a makes the thing seem to me impossible. Panini time when it had before it Pånini's great Gramprobably lived somewhere about 300 B.C., but sup- mar to keep it straight, in the right way, and to
1 Of course I do not for a moment suggest that the oldest Brahma jas were only a hundred years older than
Papini. I am only stating the case in the most favour able way I can for the other side.
