Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/36

14 a nearer approach to the Sanskrit than the Prakrit form does. The problem which has to be explained is this, whence comes it that words in the modern languages preserve a greater degree of resemblance to Sanskrit or old Aryan, than the Prakrits do? How is it, for instance, that Hindi has rât, râg, nâgarî, gaj, for Sanskrit râtri, râga, nâgari, gaja, where Prakrit has only râï, râä, nâari, gaä? If these modern languages were regularly descended, in respect of such words as these, from Sanskrit through Prakrit, the letters which had been lost in the latter could never have been restored. The masses speak by ear, and by habit. Even in India, where people perhaps think more about the languages they speak than we do in Europe, the majority of speakers, after râï had been in use for several generations, would not be aware that the letters tr had dropped out; and even if they became aware of this fact, no one would go about to restore them. How many Englishmen know that a g has dropped out of such words as say, day, nail, sail, rain, and how many, if they knew it, would care to make the innovation of putting them back again? In the Spanish of Cervantes, when Don Quixote, in one of his lofty flights, used the then rapidly obsolescent forms fermosa, fazañas, facienda, amabades, and the like, for the more usual hermosa, hazañas, hacienda, amabais, he is held up to ridicule, even though some of his hearers were educated men, and must have known the Latin formosa, facinus, facienda, amabatis.

There is, it appears to me, only one way of accounting for the presence of words like rât and the rest in the modern languages, and that is, deliberate purpose on the part of some person or set of persons who had sufficient influence to effect what they desired. This set of persons can be no other than the Brahmans. In this instance history, usually so silent in ancient India, steps in to help us. We know that the Buddhists