Page:Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet.djvu/9

 arrived at almost identically the same results. We are here still in the sphere of physical science, where facts are arranged by observation, and observation may be checked by facts so as to exclude individual impressions and national prejudices. The classification of vowels and consonants proposed by Professor Lepsius is, as far as general principles are concerned, exactly the same as the one contained in Sanskrit grammars composed in the fifth century before Christ, and appended to the different collections of the sacred writings of the Brahmans,—the four Vedas. These grammatical treatises, called "Prâtisâkhyas," exist in manuscript only, and have not been published as yet. The classification, therefore, proposed by Professor Lepsius could not have received a more striking confirmation than by a translation of these treatises, now more than two thousand years old. But these phonetic treatises deserve to be published on their own account also. Their observations are derived from a language (the Vaidik Sanskrit) which at that time was studied by means of oral tradition only, and where, in the absence of a written alphabet, all the most minute differences of pronunciation had to be watched by the ear, and to be explained and described to the pupil. The language itself, the Sanskrit of that early period, had suffered less from the influence of phonetic corruption than any tongue from which we can derive our observations; nay, the science of phonetics (Sikshâ), essential to the young theological student, who was not allowed to learn the Veda from MSS., had been reduced to a more perfect system in the schools of the Brahmans, in the fifth century before Christ, than anywhere since. Our notions on the early civilisation of the East are of so abstract a nature that we must expect to be startled occasionally by facts like these.