Page:Monier Monier-Williams - Indian Wisdom.djvu/32

 and one literature, accepted and revered by all adherents of Hinduism alike, however diverse in race, dialect, rank, and creed. That language is Sanskrit, and that literature is Sanskrit literature—the repository of Veda, or 'knowledge' in its widest sense; the vehicle of Hindu theology, philosophy, law, and mythology ; the one guide to the intricacies and contradictions of Hinduism ; the one bond of sympathy, which, like an electric chain, connects Hindus of opposite characters in every district of India. Happily, too, the most important and interesting parts of that literature are now accessible to all, both in the original and in good translations.

And here let me explain that the name Sanskrit as applied to the ancient language of the Hindus is an artificial designation for a highly elaborated form of the language originally brought by the Indian branch of the great Aryan race into India. This original tongue soon became modified by contact with the dialects of the aboriginal races who preceded the Aryans, and in this way converted into the peculiar language (/jl/usJia) of the Aryan immigrants who settled in the neighbourhood of the seven rivers of the Panjab and its outlying districts (Stiffa Siwl/iaras='vn. Zand Hapta lloitlii], The most suitable name for the original language thus moulded into the speech of the Hindus is Hindu-I ( = Sindhu-i), its principal later development being called Hindi *, just as the Low German dialect of the Saxons when modified in England was called Anglo- Saxon. But very soon that happened in India which has come to pass in all civilized countries. The spoken language, when once its general form and character had been settled, separated into two lines, the one elaborated by the learned, the other popularized and variously provincialized by the unlearned. In India, however, from the greater exclusiveness of the educated few, the greater ignorance of the masses, and the desire of a proud priesthood to keep the key of knowledge in their own possession, this separation became more marked, more diversified, and progressively intensified. Hence, the very grammar which with other nations was regarded only as a

1 It may be thought by some that this dialect was nearly identical with the language of the Vedic hymns, and the latter often gives genuine Prakrit forms (as kuta for krita); but even Vedic Sanskrit presents great elaboration scarcely compatible with the notion of its being a simple original dialect (for example, in the use of complicated grammatical forms like Intensives) ; and Panini, in distinguishing between the common language and the Vedic, uses the term JilulxJia in contradistinction to Chandas (the Veda).