Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/24

2 with but minor differences in each member of the group. Inasmuch as it is also clear that all of these numerous words are found in Sanskrit, we are justified in accepting so far the native opinion that Sanskrit is the parent of the whole family. By the term Sanskrit is meant that language in which the whole of the religious, legendary, and philosophical literature of the Aryan Indians is written, from the ancient hymns of the Vedas down to the latest treatises on ceremonies or metaphysics. That this language was once the living mother-tongue of the Aryan tribes may safely be conceded; that it was ever spoken in the form in which it has been handed down by Brahmanical authors may as safely be denied. If then the word Sanskrit be, as in strictness it should be, applied only to the written language, the statement that Sanskrit is the parent of the modern vernaculars must be greatly modified, and we should have to substitute the term Middle-Aryan to indicate the spoken language of the contemporaries of Vâlmîki and Vyâsa, the reputed authors of the two great Indian epics, Râmâyana and Mahâbhârata. To do this would, however, be to draw too fine a distinction, and might lead to confusion. We shall, therefore, use the word Sanskrit; but in order to make perfectly clear the sense in which it is used, and the exact relation which Sanskrit, both written and spoken, bears to the other languages, whether contemporaneous or subsequent to it, some further explanation is necessary.

Let it then be granted as a fact sufficiently proved in the following pages that the spoken Sanskrit is the fountain from which the languages of Aryan India originally sprung; the principal portion of their vocabulary and the whole of their inflectional system being derived from this source. Whatever may be the opinions held as to the subsequent influences which they underwent, no doubt can fairly be cast on this fundamental proposition. Sanskrit is to the Hindi and its brethren, what Latin is to Italian and Spanish.