Jain Journal 1996 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 10

BOOK REVIEW
The study of Indo-Aryan syntax started, in a sense, from the first quarter of the nineteenth century. E. Burnouf's Sur un usage remarquable de l' infinitif sanscrit (Journal Asiatique 1824, pp. 120ff) is more or less the first attempt to understand the use of Infinitive in Sanskrit. But the major contributions to syntax are made by Berthold Delbrück in several of his books and papers beginning from 1864 down to 1900, the remarkable among them being Der Gebrauch des Conjunctivs und Optativs in Sanskrit und Griechischen, Halle, 1871; Altindische Tempuslehre, Halle, 1877; Die Altindische Wortfolge aus dem Çatapatha-brāhmaṇa, Halle, 1878; Altindische Syntax, Halle, 1888, and Grundriss der Vergleichenden Grammatik der Indogermanischen Sprachen in three volumes, Strassburg, 1893-1900. The last one is a comparative IE syntax with other IE languages. Almost forgotten is the work of A. Hoefer's Vom Infinitiv besonders im Sanskrit, Berlin, 1840. Later on, Alfred Ludwig's Der Infinitiv im Veda mit Systematik des Litauischen und Slavischen Verbs, Prague, 1871, is a comparison of Vedic Infinitive with Lithuanian and Slavic. So also the works of Eugenius Wilhelm's De infinitivi linguarum Sanskritae(1873) and E. Herzog's Die Syntax des Infinitivs (Jahrbücher für Klassische Philologie, 1873, pp. 1-33), and Julius Jolly's Geschichte des Infinitivs im Indogermanischen, München, 1873, are the contributions to the Infinitives. J.S. Speijer's two books on Syntax (Sanskrit Syntax, Leiden, 1886, and Vedische und Sanskrit Syntax, Strassburg, 1889,) though small in size, yet famous for Sanskrit syntax. Delbrück's books on syntax have already been mentioned. Apart from W.D. Whitney's Sanskrit Grammar (1879, 3rd edn. 1896) where he has discussed the Sanskrit Syntax inter alia in treating morphology, his article "On the Narrative use of Imperfect and Perfect in the Brāhmaṇas” (Transactions of the American Philological Association, 1892, pp. 5-34) is worth mentioning in this context.
99
But the first half of the twentieth century was flooded with cartloads of Literature on Sanskrit syntax. A volume will be required to register them. In the year of Dr Sen's first instalment of the use of the cases in Vedic Prose appeared Hanns Oertel's The Syntax of Cases in the Narrative and Descriptive Prose of the Brāhmaṇas, Heidelberg, 1926, and Jacob Wackernagel's Vorlesungen über Syntax, Basel, 1926. After that we have hosts of scholars who worked on Sanskrit syntax. But none have practically surpassed Dr Sen's contribution to the subject. All his three treatises are inundated with copious examples not only from Sanskrit, but also occasionally from Avestan and Greek. Incidentally it can be mentioned in this connection that L.H. Gray's two articles on Avestan syntax (Contribution to Avestan