made, no conclusion can be drawn from the passage adverse to the vernacular use of Sanskrit in the Vedic age.

Seventh-In the Rāmāyana several passages occur in which the colloquial use of Sanskrit is mentioned. These are the following 173:— Hanuman, the monkey general, is represented as having found his way into the palace of Ravana, the Rakshasa king, and as reflecting how he is to address Sītā, who is there confined. He says (Sundara Kanda, xxx. 17, Bombay edition): aham hy atitanuś chaiva vānaraś cha viśeshataḥ | vācham chodāharishyāmi mānushīm iha samskṛitām 17 | 18 | yadi vācham pradāsyāmi dvijātir iva samskṛitām | Rāvaṇam manyamānā mām Sītā bhītā bhavishyati | 19 | avaśyam eva vaktavyam mānusham vākyam arthavat | mayā sāntvayitum śakyā nānyatheyam aninditā | "For I am very small, and above all a monkey; I shall now utter polished (samskṛitām) human speech. If I utter polished speech like a Brahman, Sītā will think I am Rāvaṇa, and will be frightened. I must certainly speak human and significant language; for thus only can I comfort the blameless lady."

The reading in Gorresio's edition of the Sundara Kāṇḍa, xxix. 16, is somewhat different from the above, and is as follows: anenāśvāsayishyami śokenapahitendriyām | aham hy aviditas chaiva vānaraś cha višeshataḥ 17 yadi vācham vadishyāmi dvijātir iva samskṛitām | seyam alakshya rupam cha Janaki bhāshitam cha me | Rāvaṇam manyamānā mām punas trāsam gamishyati | tato jāta-paritrāsā śabdam kuryād 'Misra,' and so forth," (ataḥ eva loke 'pi Devadattādi-nāma parityajya āchāryāḥ upādhyāyāḥ miśrāḥ ityādi-nāmabhiḥ pūjyāḥ paritushyanti). It is well known that, according to Indian custom, Pandits are not named by their pupils, but are referred to as my Guru, etc.

In the Iliad, ii., 813, f., mention is made of an eminence called by men Batieia, and by the gods the tomb of Myrine; on which Faesi remarks in his note that the former was the common, the latter the older, but more distinctive and significant name. (Comp. Iliad i. 403; xiv. 291; xx. 74.) On Iliad ii. 813, Prof. Blackie remarks (Homer, vol. iv. 114), “With regard to the double name--the human and the divine-by which this place was known, I have little doubt that Lobeck (Aglao. p. 858), Nitzsch (Od. x. 305), and Göttling (Hes. intro. xxx.) are right in saying that by the language of men in such cases is understood the popular or vulgar name; by the language of the gods, the sacerdotal, oracular, or poetical designation."

173 For the references to most of the texts here quoted I am indebted to Weber, Zeitschr. der Deutschen Morgenl. Gesellschaft, for 1854, p. 851, note.

174 These words are thus explained by the commentator: mānushīm manushyabarīra-sādhyām | “ samskṛitām” vyākaraṇa-sam̃skāravatīm |

manasvini | "I shall console her, whose senses are overwhelmed with this grief. But I am both unknown, and above all a monkey. If I were to speak in polished language, like a twice-born man, Jānakī (Sītā), perceiving my appearance, and [hearing] my words, would think that I was Ravana, and would again become terrified; and would scream in consequence of her fright." Considering that this would lead to a discovery, he concludes as follows (verses 33 and 34 of the same section): Rāmam aklishṭakarmānam nimittair anukīrtayan | tasmād vakshyāmy aham vākyam manushyaḥ iva samskṛitam | nainām udvejayishyāmi tad-buddhi-gata-mānasām | "Announcing by signs the undaunted Rāma, I shall address to her such polished language as a man would. [Thus] I shall not occasion her any alarm, as her mind will be fixed on the thoughts of her husband."

As the reason assigned in these passages for not addressing Sītā in Sanskrit such as a Brahman would use, is not that she would not understand it, but that it would alarm her, and be unsuitable to the speaker, we may take them as indicating that Sanskrit, if not spoken by women of the upper classes at the time when the Rāmāyana was written (whenever that may have been 175), was at least understood by them,176 and was commonly spoken by men of the priestly class, and other educated persons. By the Sanskrit proper to an [ordinary] man, alluded to in the second passage, may perhaps be understood not a language in which words different from those of Brahmanical Sanskrit were used, but the employment of diction correct, but neither formal and elaborate, nor familiar and vulgar. It would be comparatively easy, even for persons who could not speak correct Sanskrit, to understand it when spoken, at the early period here in question, when the contemporary vernacular, if different from Sanskrit, deviated from it so very much less than the modern Indian vernaculars do.

175 Lassen, Ind. Alt., vol. i., pp. 484, ff., does not determine its date.

176 In the Mrichhakaṭī, however, written probably at a later period (see above, p. 12, note 4), a woman's pronunciation, when reading or repeating Sanskrit is spoken of as something laughable (p. 44, Stenzler's ed.)::-mama dāva duvehim jjeva hassam jāadi itthiae sakkadam paḍhantie manussena a kāalim gāanteṇa | itthīā dāva sakkadam paḍhantī dinnanavanassā via giṭṭhī adhiam susuāadi, which is thus translated by Professor Wilson (Theatre of the Hindus, i. 60):-"Now, to me, there are two things at which I cannot choose but laugh, a woman reading Sanskrit, and a man singing a song; the woman snuffles like a young cow, when the rope is first passed through her nostrils."

Again, an expression occurs in the Aranya Kanda, xi. 56, from which it seems as if the use of Sanskrit was a characteristic of Brāhmans; and no doubt they were the persons who chiefly spoke it (Bombay edition): dhārayan brāhmaṇam rūpam Ilvalaḥ samskṛitam vadan amantrayati viprān sa śräddham uddiśya nirghrinaḥ | 177 "Assuming the form of a Brahman, and speaking Sanskrit, the ruthless Rakshasa Ilvala invited the Brahmans to a funeral ceremony."

In the Sundara Kāṇḍa, lxxxii, 3 (Gorresio's edition), the discourse of Prahasta, one of the Rakshasas, is characterized as samskṛitam hetusampannam arthavach cha | "polished (samskṛitam), supported by reasons, and judicious in its purport;" and in the Yuddha Kända, (civ. 2) the god Brahma is said to have addressed to Rama a discourse which was samskṛitam madhuram ślakshṇam arthavad dharma-sam̃hitam| "polished, sweet, gentle, profitable, and consonant with virtue." But in neither of these two passages does there appear to be any reference to the special meaning of the word samskṛita.

In the subjoined lines (Sundara Kāṇḍa, xviii. 18, f.), the word samskāra is employed, if not in a technical signification, corresponding to that of samskṛita, at all events in a manner which enables us (as Weber observes) to perceive how that technical sense of the word arose: duḥkhena bubudhe chainām Hanumān Marutātmajaḥ | samskāreņa yathā hīnām vācham arthantaram gatām 178 | tishthantīm analankārām dīpyamānāṁ sva-tejasā | "Hanuman, Son of the Wind, recognized Sītā with difficulty, standing, as she was, unadorned, radiant only with her own brilliancy: just as a word is not readily understood, when its sense is changed by the want of its correct grammatical form."

177 The commentator explains the first line thus: "brāhmaṇa-rūpam” brāhmaṇasadṛiśa-vesham | “ samskṛitam vadan” brāhmaṇa-vad iti śeshaḥ |

178 The reading of this line is identical in the Bombay edition, xv. 39; and the commentator there has the following note: Snānānulepanādir anga-sam̃skāraḥ | vācho vyākaraṇa-jnānādi-jaḥ sam̃skāraḥ | devyāḥ arthāntara-gatatvam deśāntaragatatvam | vāchas tu vivakshitārthād anyārtha-bodhakhatvam | vācho'rtho yathā vyākeraṇādy-abhyāsa-duḥkhena vyutpattim sampādya budhyate tad-vat Sītām kashṭena bubudhe | "Bathing, anointing, etc., are the decoration (samskāra) of the body. The decoration (or correctness, samskāra) of speech is derived from a knowledge grammar, etc. The phrase arthāntaragatatva, when applied to Sītā, signifies her having gone to a foreign country; but when applied to speech, it signifies the denoting of another meaning than the one intended. As the sense of speech is understood after proficiency has been attained with difficulty by the study of grammar, so he (Hanuman) recognized Sītā by hard effort." Professor Aufrecht has furnished

of

Eighth-From the researches of Professors Kuhn 179 and Benfey £80 it appears that many words, which in modern Sanskrit are only of one, two, or three, etc., syllables, have, in the Veda, to be read as of two, three, or four, etc., syllables, i.e., as of one syllable longer, in order to make up the full length of the lines required by the metre employed by the Vedic poets. Thus tvam has to be read as tuam; vyushṭau as viushṭau; turyam as turiyam; martyāya as martiāya; varenyam as vareniam; amātyam as amātiam; svadhvaram as suadhvaram; and svastibhiḥ as suastibhiḥ. Now as this mode of lengthening words is common in Prākṛit, it would appear that the Prākṛit pronunciation agrees in this respect with that of the old Sanskrit in contradistinction to the more recent. But as the Prakrit pronunciation must have been borrowed from a previously existing popular pronunciation, which was at the same time that employed by the Vedic poets, we find here another reason for concluding that the old spoken language of India and the Sanskrit of the Vedas were at one time identical.181

me with the following text on the subject of Sanskrit being at one time spoken. He informs me: "The Sarasvatikanṭhābharana speaks, in the beginning of the second chapter, of the use of the vulgar tongue in poetry, and says in sloka 16: ke 'bhuvann adya-rājasya rājye prākṛita-bhāshiṇaḥ | kāle śrī-Sāhasānkasya ke na samskṛitavadinaḥ According to the author, Sanskrit was universally spoken in the time of Sahasanka, whom we know as the founder of an era. This is an individual view, but it is curious as coming from a Hindu, who lived, say, 1,050 years after Christ." The sense of the verse quoted by Professor Aufrecht is as follows: "During the reign of the first king, who spoke Prakrit? In the time of Sāhasānka (Vikramaditya), who did not speak Sanskrit ?"

179 Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, iii. 80.

180 Sama-veda, Introduction, p. liii., ff. See also the articles of Dr. Bollensen il Orient und Occident, ii. 457, ff., and in the Zeitsch. der Deut. Morg. Gesellschaft, xxii. 569, ff., and Prof. Müller's translation of the R.V., vol. i., pref. pp. lxxviii, ff.

181 I quote some remarks of Benfey, Sama-veda, Introd. p. liii.:-"The necessity for frequently changing the liquids y and v into the correspondent vowels i and u, had been remarked by the Indian writers on prosody, who teach that, wherever the metre requires it, iy and uv should be read instead of y and v. In many words the former mode of writing appears to have prevailed; as is rendered probable by the differences of reading between the Sama-veda and the Rig-veda, the former, for instance, reading tugriya, subhuvah, sudruvam, where the latter reads tugrya, subhvah, sudrvam; and the latter, on the contrary, reading samudriya, where the former reads samudrya.

But the necessity of making the change in order to obtain a reading conformable to the metre, is of such ordinary occurrence that we are soon led to conclude that, at the time when the Vedas were composed, the liquids (y and ♥), which appear in the Sanhitas as we now have them, had not yet, for the most part,

SECT. X.-Various stages of Sanskrit literature, and the different forms in which they exhibit the Sanskrit language: the later Vedic commentators: earlier expounders: the Nirukta: the Brahmanas: the Vedic hymns: imperfect comprehension of them in later times from changes in the language: the hymns composed in the vernacular idiom of their age.183

As I have shown in the preceding section that Sanskrit was once a spoken language, it must, in that its earlier stage, have been exposed to the mutations to which all spoken languages are subject from their very nature. Sanskrit must, in the course of ages, have become very different from what it originally was.' 183 And, in fact, we find from the records of Indian literature, that the Sanskrit, as it is brought before us in the different Sastras, has gone through different phases. The most modern is that in which we find it in the Itihāsas, Purāņas, and Smritis. The Itihasas and Purāņas are undoubtedly not to be ranked with the oldest Sanskrit writings, for they all imply that there

begun to be pronounced, but that, in their stead, the corresponding vowels i and u were employed." On the other hand, y and v must sometimes be read instead of iy and uv (p. lvi.). The fifteen verses of the Purusha Sūkta (cited in the first volume of this work, pp. 8, f.), which are composed in the Anushṭup metre, will be generally found to have the proper number of feet, if not in other respects to scan correctly, if the preceding remarks be attended to. Thus in the first verse, line second, the words vṛitvā and atyatishthat must be read apart, and not united by sandhi. Bhāvyam (in the first line of the second verse) must be lengthened to bhāviyam; vyakrāmat (second line, fourth verse) to viakrāmat; sādhyā (second line, seventh verse) to sādhiyā; ājyam (first line, eighth verse, though not in second line, sixth verse) to ājiam; grāmyāścha (second line, eighth verse) to grāmiāścha; vyadadhuḥ and vyakalpayan (first line, eleventh verse) to viadadhuḥ and viakalpayan; and rājanyaḥ (first line, twelfth verse) to rājaniaḥ.

182 In revising this section (composed originally in 1858) for the press, I have had the assistance of Professor Müller's work on Ancient Sanskrit Literature, which has enabled me to make a few additions, and to modify some of my previous statements. [Note to first edition.]

183 I fear that the text of Patanjali (Mabābhāshya, p. 104) may be cited against me here:-nityāś cha s'abdāḥ | nityeshu cha śabdeshu kūṭasthair avichālibhir varṇair bhavitavyam anapāyopajana-vikāribhiḥ | "Words are eternal; and in the case of eternal words we must have immutable and immovable letters, free from diminution, or increase, or alteration." But the words which Bhaskara Acharyya applied to astronomy are equally applicable to grammar:-atra ganita-skandhe upapattimān eva āgamaḥ pramānam | "In this astronomical department scripture is authoritative only when it is supported by demonstration." This is true, also, of all other matters, which, like Grammar, come within the sphere of science.