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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[AUGUST, 1893.
arrest its development, as suddenly and fixedly as the course of time had even branched out into the developinent of Sanskrit was arrested. The scholastic dialects, as Dr. Liebich's statistics of assumption of such two conditions of existence in the Sútras show. two periods of a language's history, one of which
I think, therefore, that Dr. Liebich goes too far, immediately succeeds the other, is too violent to
if I understand him aright, when he says that be credible.
PAņini's Sanskpit was the spoken, the living But I have admitted that it is possible that at speech of the learned men of his time.' Unless he the time of Pånini, Sanskrit was a spoken lan- means by this that it was merely a school language guage. If it was not spoken by the common of the learned, entirely distinct from the general people, by whom was it spoken P The answer language of Hindustan, also spoken by, and is, by the schools.
actually the vernacular even of, these learned men,
I cannot but consider him, and the many who From the earliest times the Brahmans devoted
agree with him, to be labouring under a false themselves to the study of the language of
impression. their sacred books, and no doubt they used it amongst themselves, in the schools, as & medium
In concluding this subject, Dr. Liebich's classi. of disputation, and, perhaps, even, of ordinary
fication of the various stages of the Sanskrit intercourse. In later times we find, in the Ramd
language may be given here. He divides them yana, Hanuman considering whether he should as follows:address Sita in Sanskrit or in Pråkpit, And no
I. Ante-classical doubt this illustrated the state of affairs in
The Sanhitas of the four Védas. Pånini's time as well. Brâhmans could address II. Classical each other in the holy language, which they so
(a) Brdhmanas and Sútras. Jarefully studied and kept up in its integrity, but
(6) Påņini's teaching. in communication with the outer world beyond III. Post-classical the boundaries of their schools, they had to use
(a) Literature not governed by Panini : that vernacnlar language of the people, which,
The Epic poems. descended from the dialects in which the Vedic
(6) Literature arisen under the influ. Hymns were first composed, passed, regularly and
ence of Pånini: the language inevitably, in the course of centuries, into(amongst
of Kalidasa, &c. others) the language of Asoka, and thence into that
In the fifth chapter Dr. Liebich combats Prof. of Hâla and of Tulasi Dâs. Call that Vernacular language what you will, so long as it is
Whitney's attacks on the Sanskrit grammatical not called Sans' rit. Many things add proof to
school in general, and in the sixth he applies the the existence of this vernacular language at the
statistics already given to deciding whether any time when Sanskrit was fixed, -nay, Sanskrit itself
portions of the Brihadáranyaka Upanishad and bears witness to it itself, on its very face, in the
of the Aitariya Brahmana are older or more way in which it has borrowed some of these verna
modern than other portions; but I must refer the cular words, in their vernacular forms, and then re
reader to both these essays directly; as the transferred them, by a process of reversed etymo.
demands of space do not allow me to describe logy into what it imagined to be their original
their contents. Suffice it to say that with regards Vedic forms. Its mistakes in this process of rever.
to the Kanva Recension of the foriner, he considers sion betray the secret. No doubt in speaking
the whole of it (with a reservation regarding the Sanskrit in the schools many things were referred
5th book) to be earlier than Påņini. So also to, of which the original Vedic name was forgotten,
the Aitareya Brahmana with the exception of the and of which the vernacular form had perforce to
31st Adhyâya. be used in a form dressed up for the occasion." This excellent and most interesting book conIn short, Sanskṣit was used in the schools in cludes with two useful appendices, in which the Paniņi's time much as Latin was used in the author explains the Paninian teaching on the schools in the Middle Ages. It was habitually genus (pada) of the Verb, and on the formation used and spoken as a scholastic language, and in of the Feminine of nouns.
? An example is the Sanskrit angára, sugarcane that angara was the Sanskrit word for sugarcane sprout. sprouts, which I have referred to (ante, p. 166) in review. Really, the word is derived from agra with pleonastic ing Dr. Macdonell's Sanskrit Dictionary. This word is I da (quasi drit). There are many examples of this sort. manufactured from the old Prikrit aggaala. Sanskrit # Just as Father Tom said to the Pope in their imtook aggaada, and by a mistaken otymology assumed mortal conversation : 'Dimidium cyathi vero wpud me. that it was derived from angara, and therefore it declared tropolitanos Hibernicos dicitur dandau ( dandy
