mins) must necessarily have mingled itself with their vernacular tongues, we may every where expect to find it, more especially in abstract and scientific words, incorporated with the different dialects spoken in India. This is true, and it would be equally true whether the language considered classical was primitive or borrowed. The fact, therefore, does not affect the origin of Sanscrit, except that in as far as the words are those of daily and familiar application, as is the case in the dialects of Gangetic Hindustan, it seems most probable that Sanscrit was a spoken language broken down into various dialects, which were fitted with new grammatical combinations, and that it is to India what Latin is to Europe. This part of the subject appears referred to, merely to revert to the specimen of mixed dialect contained in the Polemo Middiani, a favourite specimen of monkish Latin with the Professor, and to repeat the old story of the deception practised on Major Wilford. "Should the Polemo Middiani be put into the hands of a Roman scholar," Stewart observes, "as an ancient composition, by some Scotsman who was disposed to amuse himself with his credulity (following the example of those Brahmans who practised on the easy faith of Major Wilford), what a fund of speculation would be suggested to him by the strange medley !" A sneer in a parenthesis ! backed by nine pages of Wilford's own ingenuous account of the imposition, which could only have been practised on a novice and enthusiast, and which was detected the moment suspicion was awakened. So far, indeed, is the history of this fraud from furnishing any ground to doubt the authenticity of standard Sanscrit works, that the result was highly favourable to the character of those best known; for if frauds are so easily discoverable, which is really the case, we may learn to feel confidence where careful scrutiny can find no cheat. However, all this has nothing whatever to do with the history of the Sanscrit language, and the allusion was unnecessary, except to swell the book to gratify an unamiable feeling at Wilford's expense, or to produce an unfair bias in the mind of the reader.

The Professor then conjectures, "that the Sanscrit was not formed in consequence of any deep and systematical design, but began in a sort of slang, or gypsy jargon, a sort of kitchen Greek, in which the priests conversed with one another on topics not fit for profane ears. The convenience they experienced in the use of this, would naturally suggest the employment of it in their written communications, and would gradually lead to its cultivation on grammatical principles." This must surely have been a longer business than a systematic manufacture, and must have been the work of much more than two generations; and the Professor is here also thinking of monks and friars, gathered in clusters, under certain rules, corresponding by return of post, and not of a numerous tribe, thousands of miles apart, holding little or no communication.

Mr. Stewart next proceeds to get rid of those theories of the origin of the Sanscrit language which stand in the way of its fabrication from a gypsy jargon or kitchen Greek.

The first is the idea that it was once a spoken tongue, and had become the basis of various dialects in the East, as the Latin language became Italian in Italy, Spanish in Spain, and French in France. This doctrine he pronounces as utterly untenable; and yet most decisively, although unintentionally, confirms it. He observes, "whilst the different Romanic tongues display the most unequivocal marks of their common origin, in the numberless words which may be traced obviously to Latin roots, the syntax of all of them, including under this title the various inflections of nouns and verbs, has undergone a

total

total alteration." Now this is precisely what has taken place in the dialects of Brij, Behar, Mithila, Bengal, and Orissa, and others of the vernacular languages of India: numberless words are obviously traceable to Sanscrit roots, but the system of inflexion is wholly distinct.

"How essentially different," he proceeds, "is that affinity described by Mr. Brown, between Sanscrit and Greek, or exhibited in the resemblance of the inflexion of the words in these two languages." 33 What has this to do with the assertion it is adduced to disprove? The dialects of the East, it is said, are derived from Sanscrit and Greek: it has been conjectured, that they may be derived from a common primeval tongue, but no one has called Sanscrit a derivative from Greek except, indeed, the worthy Professor himself, although he now ruthlessly demolishes the phantom of his own creation! Mr. Colebrooke, whose conjecture he quotes to condemn it, supposes that Sanscrit, and Pahlavi, and Greek, derived their common origin from one primeval tongue: Sir Wm. Jones entertained the same notion. The origin of Greek, Sanscrit, German, and Latin, from a common source, is the opinion of Bopp and Klaproth ; and in the Asia Polyglotta of the latter, and in a work perfectly accessible to Dugald Stewart, the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, these languages, with others allied to them, are affiliated as the progeny of a common parent, under the class of Indo-Teutonic languages. As, therefore, Sanscrit was not a derivative from Greek, the relation it bears to that lan guage is not necessarily regulated by the laws which are inferrable from what has taken place in the evolution of the Romanic tongues from Latin, or of the Indian dialects from itself.

The difficulty which Dugald Stewart finds in conceiving how a tongue, which was once spoken over regions of such vast extent, should have ceased to be a living language, will be no difficulty at all to those who know what changes language without a standard literature undergoes. The greater part, at least three-fourths, of the people of India, never advanced beyond the simplest elements of learning, and having no guide for their phraseology, admitted into it gradual but great alterations. The disturbing causes of foreign conquest and domestic discord have been also tolerably active in Hindustan for many centuries, and abundantly contributed to change the national forms of speech: ample proof exists of the effects of such causes, not only in Sanscrit, but in dialects which were unquestionably spoken, and not very long ago. Books written in Hindi, and in a simple style, no longer back than the reign of Akber, are now intelligible to but few of the natives of those districts in which the language employed was then the current speech; and in like manner old Kanara and Tamul books are unintelligible to the natives of the Dekhin. In the same manner new dialects have sprung up, and the Hindustani, which is now so extensively understood, dates its literature at least no farther back than the reign of Aurungzeb; and was undoubtedly formed long subsequently to the introduction of the Mohammedan rule.

It seems, Mr. Stewart observes, equally inconceivable how a language so very perfect should have grown up, contrary to the analogy of every one he knows, from popular and casual modes of speech: how do all languages grow up? Was the complicated grammar of the Greek, or the intricate construction of the Latin, coeval with the first use of either of those languages? Or was there never a period when they existed as popular and casual modes of speech alone?

The same objection, the difficulty of conceiving its possibility, Mr. Stewart applies to Mr. Hamilton's theory, that "the Brahmins entered India as con

querors,

querors, bringing with them their language, religion, and civil institutions." That there is no satisfactory proofs of such an event may be granted; but in theory we see no difficulty in conceiving the possibility of its occurrence, and to us it seems a much more rational probability than the Professor's development of Sanscrit from kitchen Greek in the course of two generations.

r

Professor Stewart admits that a more formidable objection is suggested by this consideration, that the Sanscrit is represented by some as bearing more resemblance to the Latin than the Greek. To which he observes, in reply, although I have supposed with Meiners, the first rude draught of the Sanscrit to have been formed soon after Alexander's invasion had introduced the learned in India to an acquaintance with the Greek language and philosophy, this supposition was not meant to exclude other languages from having contributed their share to its subsequent enrichment. The long commercial intercourse of the Romans with India, both by sea and land, accounts sufficiently for any affinity which may subsist between Sanscrit and Latin."-The learned Professor has here forgotten that he admits Sanscrit to have been brought to its perfection in the century before Christianity, and we doubt if the Romans had held a long intercourse with India previous to that time. Nor do we think it accounts, under any period of duration, for the affinity that subsists between the two languages; we can scarcely think the Hindus waited for Roman commerce before they had words for a nose (nása nasus), the mind (manas mens), to give (đá dare), to stay (stha stare), clothes (vastra vestis), or that the occasional visits of a few traders gave the Hindus the substantive verb as (esse) to be, in most of its moods and tenses—the terminations of masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, us, a, um—the formation of the present and past participles, the gerunds and supines, and a variety of simple as well as inflected forms, which exist in vast numbers in the Sanscrit language, and make the resemblance between Sanscrit and Latin infinitely stronger than between Sanscrit and Greek.

If, however, the Professor finds it so easy to explain the intermixture of Greek and Latin, how will he account for the Teutonic affinities? History helps him here neither to a few months' invasion, a year's contiguous rule, nor protracted commercial intercourse: yet this affinity was pointed out in an early number of the Edinburgh Review. It is since further established in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia. It is instanced to a considerable extent by F. Schlegel; and Bopp, in his English dissertation, observes, "we dare boldly affirm, that the language of Ulphilas has a closer resemblance to the Sanscrit than the English, although in the latter, as belonging to the Teutonic stock, there is not extant any grammatical inflection which might not with facility be deduced from the Gothic." He gives numerous examples of the resemblance between them in the inflexions of the words, some of which are peculiar to the two. How did the Hindus contrive to borrow these, to fabricate that language of shreds and patches which Professor Stewart would make of the Sanscrit ?

Of another objection, which appears to us nevertheless of great weight, Professor Stewart makes light. In the article of the Edinburgh Review to which he has referred, it is observed, " to adopt the hypothesis of the learned Bayer, we must suppose the inhabitants of Hindustan must have waited till Alexander the Great conquered Bactria, in order to obtain appellations for the most endearing ties of nature, and to enable them to express the venerable relations of father and mother." To this, Professor Stewart replies, the hypothesis of Bayer here is misconceived. That matters little: let the pas

sage

sage be read then, "the hypothesis of the learned Stewart," and how is it met? "It by no means follows, from the similarity between the Sanscrit names for particular objects and those in the Greek, that the Indians, till the invasion of Alexander, had no words of the same import in their native tongue." But how happened it that they had the same words? Of course they had terms for father, mother, brother, daughter-for eating, drinking, standing, and seeing—for day and night, and for different parts of the body, and also in all likelihood for the elementary numerals. But how came these to be Greek? They were not terms of science, and could not possibly have been borrowed for ordinary use, had expressions of different origin been previously current.

There is still another argument for the independent existence of the Sanscrit before the days of Alexander to which the Professor has not adverted, although it is exceedingly obvious, and is grounded on one of the first principles of etymological speculation.

The rule might have been inferred from the passage he has quoted from Leibnitz, in which that acute reasoner directs particular attention to be paid, in investigating the history of a language, to the names of towns, woods, rivers, and men, or 66 omnia nomina quæ vocamus propria," and which lead us, he says, to the sacred recesses of an ancient tongue. Let the Sanscrit be tried by this test. Let us take the names of places and persons specified by the writers of Alexander's history, and we shall find, notwithstanding the blunders and corruptions of the original writers, of those who gleaned from them all their knowledge, or of the ignorant copyists who multiplied their mistakes, that they give us not only simple but compound terms, not only roots but inflexions, such as they exist to the present day. They show both the raw material and the finished manufacture, and prove beyond the possibility of contradiction that both the words and the grammar of the Sanscrit language were at least co-existent with Alexander.

The Greek writers speak of Abisares as a monarch north of the Punjab, who sent ambassadors to Alexander. They have confounded, in this and in other instances, the names of countries with those of their sovereigns, in the same way that Shakespear poetically uses France and England for the kings of those states. Thus Abisares, or Abhisaras, is the name of the south-western part of Kashmir. It is a compound word, formed by grammatical rules of the preposition abhi, "up," and the noun sára, the latter of which is a regular derivative from sri " to go." We may translate the term by uplands or highlands. The sage Calanus, who accompanied the Greeks on their return, is said to have been so denominated from his usually addressing persons with the salutation calé, which was a term of benedictory import. The term, however, is properly kalyána, which means "propitiousness" or good fortune," and is still commonly used either interrogatively or benedictively, as kalyánam asti? " is all well ?" or kalyúnam astu,“ be all well;" or simply kalyânam. The name of the ascetic Calanus corrects the defective reading of the benediction, which we may easily suppose was imperfectly understood at first by the Greeks, and easily transformed in the course of transcription before it reached Arrian.

Porus and Taxiles are both Sanscrit, names; the first may be Purus or Paurus, the former of which is the name of a prince in the Mahábhárat, and the latter that of his dynasty, and is derived from pri "to please." Taxiles is the name of the country or city of Takshasilá, a compound of taksha, “chipping," and silá, "a rock or stone,"

Brachman, or Brahmin, will be acknowledged to be intended for Brahman ;

but

but Brahman is a derivative word, agreeably to the rule for forming patronymics, and comes from Brahmá, the deity, from whom the tribe descended. Brahmá is also a regular derivative from vrih or brih, “to increase,” implying the multiplication of all things from one creator.

Germunes, or Sermanes, are properly Sramanas, religious ascetics, who exhaust themselves with penance, from srama, to undergo fatigue, penance,

or mortification.”

66

Another religious class is called Pramna: they are not sufficiently particularized for us to know exactly who they were, but they are possibly the teachers of the Nyaya, or logical school, who require evidence, or pramána, for what they believe-Prámánas, or Prámánicks, might be applied to them.

The Greeks sometimes translated appellations, as in the case of the Gymnosophists, the naked sages, Sanyásis, and Digambaras. So also the Hyllobii, or "dwellers in woods," which is a literal translation of Vánaprastha—the designation of the member of the third order, or anchoret, to whom it is prescribed by Menu, to dwell in a forest. Now in this compound we have a derivative noun vána, a forest hermitage, from vana, a wood, and a compound verb, or pra, pro, before the root sthá (stare) "to stay or be;" abundance of verbal and grammatical affinities to Greek and Latin; cotemporary with Alexander.

It is scarcely necessary to quote the case of Chundraguptas, Sandrocottus, or as correctly read Sandrocoptus, from chandra," the moon," and guptas-a-um, past participle of gup, "to preserve," We have, no doubt, a similar compound in Sisicottus, a Hindu officer in Alexander's service, which should be Sasiguptas-also, the "moon-protected," from sasi, "the moon," from a fancied resemblance of the spots on that luminary to a sasa, or hare." Sangaus is undoubtedly Sanjaya, a name of note in Hindu poetry as one of the chief interlocutors in the Mahábhárat, derived from sam, comprehensive prefix, and jaya, "who conquers," from the root ji, "to vanquish." Schlegel, in his Indische Bibliothek, has noticed other Indian names in their Grecian disguises, as Chandramas in Xandrames-Amitrajit, or rather perhaps Amitrakrántá, in Amitrokates—Saubhágyasena in Sophagesenos — Ketu in Keteus—and Suryadeva in Soroadeios. Whatever may be thought of the particular verifications here, it is clear that the Greek names are formed on principles of perpetual recurrence in Sanscrit, and leave no doubt of their origin from that language, and of its being consequently fully formed at the time the terms were borrowed.

The Ganges of the Greeks will unquestionably be admitted to be the Gangá of the Hindus, which is a derivative from gam, "to go." We have also on this river the Prasü, or "eastern people," the Práchyas, or people of Práchi, the east," a compound of pra (præ), and anch, to move," one of a series of analogous formations, as Pratichi, "the west," Udichi, "the north," the inflexions of which are the subjects of a special grammatical rule.

The names of the rivers in the Punjab are, with one or two exceptions, readily verifiable. The Sindhu is the Indus, the Hydaspes, or as Ptolemy writes it, Bidaspes, and which should probably be Vidastes, is the Vitasthathe Hydraotes is the Airavati—and the Hyphasis, or Biphasis, probably, the Vipása-the origin of which terms is in general accounted for satisfactorily enough by Sanscrit grammar and Hindu legend.

We shall conclude these remarks with one more example, which is connected with Indian history as well as grammar. Arrian says, that the Pandæan country was denominated after Pandaa, the daughter of Hercules, being the country which he governed, and he adds, that Hercules was particularly vene

rated