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BUDDHIST INDIA
Dr. Johnson overlaid his English with a mass of Latin words, the process stopped at a kind of hybrid vernacular. When the Indian writers before and after the Christian Era did the same sort of thing, and began to adopt also the Sanskrit grammatical terminations, the end was inevitable. When they inade use of a mixture of some real forms and words drawn from the vernacular, some such words slightly altered to make them look more learned, and some forms wholly artificial with no existence at all in living speech, the only possible consequence was that the first sort were called vulgar, the second blunders, and only the third declared to be right. The hybrid they thus made use of became increasingly too like Sanskrit to be able to contend against it; and from the end of the fourth century the latter alone was used. Then, linguistically speaking, death reigned supreme. The living language was completely overshadowed by the artificial substitute. The changeling had taken the place of the rightful heir. The parasite had overgrown and smothered the living tree from which it drew its sustenance, from which it had derived its birth.
The loss, from the point of view of intellectual advancement, must have been very great. Who can doubt that Europe was fortunate in escaping (and it was a very narrow escape) a similar bondage ? Classical Sanskrit, in consequence very largely of the rich fortune it had inherited from the vernacular as previously cultivated,- for Pali is not much farther removed from the vernacular than, say, Hume's Essay from the spoken English of the day,
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
