Volume 16 — Sanskrit And The Vedas.138

Sanskrit And The Vedas.138

“But in justice, I am bound to say that Rome has the merit of having first seriously attended to the study of Indian literature.”—Cardinal Wiseman: Connection between Science and Revealed Religion.

“The first missionaries who succeeded in rousing the attention of European scholars to the extraordinary discovery (Sanskrit literature) that had been made were the French Jesuit missionaries.”—Max Müller: Lectures on the Science of Language.

What manner of language is the Sanskrit?

By what people or nation was it spoken?

When? and where?

What are its literary monuments?

Whence comes it—granting it to be as ancient a tongue as is represented—that neither in Greek, Roman, nor, indeed, in any ancient literature, is it ever mentioned, and that we only read of it in modern works, scarce a century old?

Such questions as these are frequently asked, even at the present day. Forty years ago, it is doubtful if there were ten persons in this country able to reply to them satisfactorily, and more than doubtful if [pg 323] a single scholar could have been found capable of translating the simplest Sanskrit sentence. Within that period, however, philological science in general, and Sanskrit in particular, have made long and rapid strides among us, and we now have scores of scholars fully awake to the importance of cultivating the resources of this wonderful tongue, as the origin or common source of the European family of languages, in which our own English is included.

At the head of these scholars stands, without dispute, Prof. William Dwight Whitney, whose, linguistic acquirements and philosophical treatment of difficult philological problems have earned for him a very high and well-merited reputation. Nor is this opinion a merely patriotic and partial estimate. Prof. Whitney's merits as a Sanskrit scholar and comparative philologist are fully acknowledged, not only in this country, but by the eminent Orientalists of Europe. The first periodical of Germany and of the world for the comparative study of languages (Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete des Deutschen, Griechischen und Lateinischen, Berlin, 1872), in a late number recognizes, in the most flattering manner, Prof. Whitney's high rank in the philological republic of letters, and refers in complimentary terms to the fact that he is well known in Germany as the editor of the Sanskrit text of the Atharva Veda.

We may here incidentally note, in the same number of the Zeitschrift, another gratifying recognition of advanced American scholarship. We refer to a review of Prof. March's Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon, from the pen of Moritz Heyne, the well-known author of the Brief Comparative Grammar of the Old German Dialects, and editor of the celebrated editions of the Mœso-Gothic Bible of Ulphilas, and of the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf. The German reviewer credits Prof. March's work with extensive and original investigation, great erudition in the Anglo-Saxon texts, and valuable contributions to the grammar of the language. He adds, that the study of Anglo-Saxon is pursued with more zeal and success in the United States than in England. Solid commendation like this, from such a source, speaks well for American progress in the field of philological science.

During the past twenty years, Prof. Whitney has published numerous essays on Sanskrit literature which, limited to the special circulation of scientific or literary periodicals, have not fallen under the notice of the general reading public. Many of these articles he has now collected and published in a volume,139 edited by himself. Four of the essays are on the Vedas and Vedic literature, one on the Avesta (commonly called the Zend-Avesta), and seven upon various philological topics, including two reviews of Max Müller's Lectures on Language, which are admirable specimens of temperate and careful criticism, guided by sound scholarship.

Prof. Whitney's first paper on the Vedas (originally published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iii., 1853) opens thus:

“It is a truth now well established, that the Vedas furnish the only sure foundation on which a knowledge of ancient and modern India can be built up. They are therefore at present engrossing the larger share of the attention of those who pursue this branch of Oriental study. Only recently, however, has their paramount importance been fully recognized: it was by slow degrees that [pg 324]they made their way up to the consideration in which they are now held. Once it was questioned whether any such books as the Vedas really existed, or whether, if they did exist, the jealous care of the Brahmans would ever allow them to be laid open to European eyes. This doubt dispelled, they were first introduced to the near acquaintance of scholars in the West by Colebrooke.”

Not stopping to raise a question as to just reclamation in favor of Sir William Jones for a portion at least of the credit of the introduction of the Vedas to the “acquaintance of scholars in the West,” which, perhaps Professor Whitney means to solve in advance by a distinction between acquaintance and “near acquaintance,” we would observe that this comprehensive statement as to the introduction of the Vedas to European scholars takes for granted the previous interesting history of the modern discovery of the existence of the Sanskrit and of Vedic literature. We use the expression “takes for granted” in no invidious sense.

The author was writing for scholars who, he had a right to assume, were already acquainted with the objective history of his subject-matter, and were probably informed as to the details of the gradual steps by which the certainty of the existence of a great language and a rich literature long buried in darkness was at length brought to light. His concern was with the internal, not the external, history of Sanskrit. Now, it is upon this external history that we propose to say something, returning to Prof. Whitney's work when we reach the subject of the Vedas.

It is not necessary that our readers should, to any extent, be linguists or philologists in order to become deeply interested in the relation of the modern discovery of a language so old that it had ceased to be spoken and was a dead language hundreds of years before the Christian era—a language to which cannot with any certainty be assigned the name of the nation or people who spoke it, and which is at once the most ancient of all known tongues, living or dead, and, despite all modern research, still prehistoric.

To our Catholic readers, the narration of this discovery is full of interest; for in it they will recognize an additional version of the familiar story of the enlightened intelligence, piety, and self-sacrifice of our devoted missionaries who, combining active zeal for knowledge with apostolic zeal for souls, amid privation and suffering, even in distant and savage lands, with one hand built up the walls of Zion, while with the other they erected temples to science.

In order fully to appreciate the bearing and importance of the revelation of Sanskrit to Europe, it is essential that we should first look a moment upon the condition of European comparative philology at the end of the XVIth and commencement of the XVIIth centuries. A short digression will suffice for this.

The Hebrew language was, from the earliest period of Christianity, settled upon by almost common consent of the learned as the primitive tongue. It was generally admitted by scholars that the sole great and essential linguistic problem to be solved was this:

“As Hebrew is undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how are we to explain the process by which Hebrew became split into so many dialects, and how can these numerous dialects, such as Greek and Latin, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, be traced back to their common source, the Hebrew?”

Upon this hopelessly insoluble problem an amazing amount of remarkable ingenuity and solid erudition were, for hundreds of years, [pg 325] hopelessly wasted, for, at this day, instead of Hebrew, Sanskrit is recognized as being the oldest of all known languages. How came this about? Reply to this inquiry will at the same time answer the questions proposed at the outset of this article.

The result of labor on the problem, “How could all languages be traced back to the Hebrew?” was of course unsatisfactory. No solution could be obtained. None indeed was possible.

At last it was suggested, why should all languages be derived from the Hebrew? and with investigation thus taken off its false route, the question was in a fair way to be successfully treated. Leibnitz vigorously denied the claims set up for Hebrew, and said: “There is as much reason for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind, as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise.” More than this, he indicated the necessity of applying to language as well as to any other science the principle of a sound inductive process, and in this he was greatly aided by the Jesuit missionaries in China.

“It stands to reason,” he said, “that we ought to begin with studying the modern languages which are within our reach, in order to compare them with one another, to discover their differences and affinities, and then to proceed to those which have preceded them in former ages, in order to show their filiation and their origin, and then to ascend step by step to the most ancient tongues, the analysis of which must lead to the only trustworthy conclusions.”

But Leibnitz, while properly disputing the justice of the claims of Hebrew as the mother-tongue, knew of none other for which a similar claim might be advanced. It is doubtful if he ever heard of Sanskrit, although he lived until 1716, a full century after one, at least, of our missionaries had mastered Sanskrit and all the Vedas.

Sanskrit

is the ancient language of the Hindus, and had ceased to be a spoken language three centuries before the Christian era. The sacred Vedas, the oldest literary productions of the Hindus, and even the laws of Manu and the Purânas, later works, are written in a dialect still older than the Sanskrit, of which it is the parent, and are assigned by different scholars to periods varying from twelve hundred to two thousand years b.c. Thus, the dialects of Sanskrit spoken by the people of India three hundred years b.c. may be said to have been to the Vedic Sanskrit what Italian now is to the Latin. These dialects, modified by admixture with the languages of the various conquerors of India, the Arabic, Persian, Mongolic, and Turkish, and changed also by grammatical corruption, yet survive in the modern Hindí, Hindustání, Mahratta, and Bengálée.

Specimens of the dialects spoken by the people of the northern, eastern, and southwestern regions of India have come down to us in the inscriptions of the Buddhist King Piyadasi (third century b.c.), and in the account of the victory over Antiochus which King Asoka (206 b.c.) had graven on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri. These inscriptions have been deciphered by Burnouf, Norris, Wilson, and others, and are found to be in the Prakrit (common), not the Sanskrit (perfect) or exclusive dialect. From these facts the best Oriental scholars draw the conclusion that, at the periods of Piyadasi and Asoka, the Sanskrit, if spoken at all, was then [pg 326] already confined to the educated caste of Brahmans, having been a living language at some remote previous period (most probably between the VIIIth and IVth centuries b.c.), spoken by all classes of that race which emigrated from Central India into Asia, and the language so spoken is that to which modern Orientalists give the name of Aryan. For it will be borne in mind that the term Sanskrit is no indication of the people or race who originally spoke the language so called: it merely indicates the estimation in which it is held by their successors, and signifies “the perfect language.”

Meantime, during all these centuries, Sanskrit continued to be preserved as the classic tongue and literary vehicle of Brahmanic thought and study, and we are told on good authority that, “even at the present day, an educated Brahman would write with greater fluency in Sanskrit than in Bengálée.” It is now well established that Sanskrit is certainly not the parent, but the eldest brother or chef de famille of the large groups of Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian families from which all the modern European tongues (Basque excepted) are derived (we omit mention of the Oriental branches). When we write the Sanskrit words mader, pader, dokhter, sunu, bruder, mand, lib, nasa, vidhuva, stara, we very nearly write the corresponding English terms, and see in them their English descendants through Mœso-Gothic and German. The Sanskrit and Greek equivalents of I am, thou art, he is, are almost identical:

Sanskrit: asmi, asi, asti.

Greek: esmi, eis, esti.

We find the Sanskrit dinâra in the Latin denarius; ayas in Sanskrit—passing through the Gothic ais to English iron; and plava, in Sanskrit, a ship appearing in the Greek ploion (ship), Slavonic ploug, and English plough; for the Aryans said the ship ploughed the sea, and the plough sailed across the field. In like manner, similar illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely to the extent of volumes, showing not hazardous and doubtful etymological similarities, but clear, distinct, and sharp-cut affinities by clearly traceable descent.

“Who was the first European that knew of Sanskrit, or that acquired a knowledge of Sanskrit, is difficult to say,” remarks Prof. Max Müller. Very true. But it is not at all difficult to reach the certainty that that European, whatever might have been his name, was a Catholic missionary.

Soon after S. Francis Xavier began to preach the Gospel in India (1542), we hear of our missionaries acquiring not only the current dialects of the country, but also the classical Sanskrit language; of their successfully studying the theological and philosophical literature of the exclusive priestly class; and of their challenging the Brahmans to public disputations. If the example of their labors, humility, sufferings, and piety were not sufficient to win souls, they always, where it was needed, had science at their command, and were at once scholars, linguists, mathematicians, and astronomers as well as lowly messengers of the glad tidings of salvation.

Prominent among the most remarkable of these men stands

Robert De' Nobili.

A nephew of Cardinal de' Nobili and a relative of Pope Julius the Third and of the great Bellarmine, he was nobly born and tenderly reared. He went a missionary to the Indies in 1603, and began his public labors at Madura in 1606. [pg 327] Being a man of superior education, cultivation, and refinement, he soon perceived the reasons which kept all the natives of high caste—especially the Brahmans—from joining the communities of Christian converts formed by the common people of the country. He saw that the Brahmans could be successfully met and argued with only by a Brahman, and he at once resolved on the heroic project of fitting himself by long study and almost incredible labor to become a Brahman in outward appearance, language, and accomplishments, and thus obtain access to the noblest, most learned, and most accomplished men in India. The task was full of difficulty. For years he devoted himself to his silent work, acquiring in secret the dialects of Tamil and Telugu, and the language and literature of Sanskrit and the Vedas. When in time he felt himself strong enough in Brahmanic learning and accomplishments to meet them in argument and debate, he publicly appeared arrayed in their costume, wearing the cord, bearing the exclusive frontal mark, and submitting to the rigid observance of their diet (eating nothing but rice and vegetables) and their complicated requirements of caste. So exhaustive had been his studies, so thorough was his preparation, and so admirable his talent, that his success was perfect. The Brahmans whom he met found in him their master even in their own exclusive field of literature, philosophy, and religion. Müllbauer (Geschichte der katholischen Missionen Ostindiens) says they were afraid of him. As a devoted and successful missionary, his life is full of interest; but we have to do with him here only as the first known European Sanskrit scholar. After forty-two years of missionary labor in that exhausting climate, worn out, infirm, and blind, Robert de' Nobili died, aged eighty years, at Melapour, on the coast of Coromandel. The distinguished Professor of Sanskrit at the English university of Oxford, Max Müller, pays the following earnest tribute to the acquirements of this admirable missionary and scholar:

“A man who could quote from Manu, from the Purânas, and even from such works as the Apastamba-sûtras, which are known even at present to only those few Sanskrit scholars who can read Sanskrit MSS., must have been far advanced in a knowledge of the sacred language and literature of the Brahmans; and the very idea that he came, as he said, to preach a new or a fourth Veda, which had been lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak points of the theological system which he came to conquer.”

Religious bigotry has sought to fix upon de' Nobili the forgery of the Ezour-Veda; but the examination of the charge by distinguished English (Protestant) Orientalists has only resulted in bringing out into brighter relief that devoted missionary's remarkable acquirements and admirable virtues. Francis Ellis, Esq., a distinguished Orientalist, discovered the Sanskrit original of the Ezour at Pondicherry, and made an elaborate report upon it, which was published at the time, in the Asiatick (sic) Researches (vol. xiv., Calcutta, 1822), from which we cite the following short extract:

“Robertus de Nobilibus is well known both to Hindus and Christians, under the Sanskrit title of Tatwa-Bodha Swami, as the author of many excellent works in Tamil, on polemical theology. In one of these, the Atma-Nirnaya-vivecam, he contrasts the opinions of the various Indian sects on the nature of the soul, and exposes the fables with which the Purânas abound relative to the state of future existence, and in another, Punergeuma Acshepa, he confutes the doctrine of the metempsychosis. Both these works, in style and substance, greatly resemble the controversial part of the Pseudo Vedas; [pg 328]but these are open attacks on what the author considered false doctrines and superstitions, and no attempt is made to veil their manifest tendency, or to insinuate the tenets they maintain under a borrowed name or in an ambiguous form. The style adopted by Robertus de Nobilibus is remarkable for a profuse admixture of Sanskrit terms; those to express doctrinal notions and abstract ideas he compounds and recompounds with a facility of invention that indicates an intimate knowledge of the language whence they are derived; and there can be no doubt, therefore, that he was fully qualified to be the author of those writings. If this should be the fact, considering the high character he bears among all acquainted with his name and the nature of his known works, I am inclined to attribute to him the composition only, not the forgery, of the Pseudo Vedas.”

But the result of further examination has decided that the Ezour-Veda was not even written by de' Nobili, but by one of his native converts. It is plain, from the testimony of Mr. Ellis, that he was not a man to seek the cover of the anonymous or the ambiguous, in order to attack the superstitions of Buddhism. This he did openly and boldly. Max Müller decides that “there is no evidence for ascribing the work to Robert.”

The example of Robert de' Nobili was sedulously followed up by other members of his Order.

Roth, another Jesuit, appeared in 1664, master of Sanskrit, and successfully disputed with the Brahmans. Yet another, Hanxleder, who went to India in 1669, labored for more than thirty years in the Malabar mission, composed works of instruction, compiled dictionaries, and wrote works in prose and verse. Many of his writings are preserved at Rome. Among the most prominent of the Jesuit missionaries in the field of modern Oriental and Sanskrit literature was Father Constant Beschi, who went out to India in 1700. He made himself master of Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu, and wrote moral works in Sanskrit which are still preserved and highly prized by the Brahmans. The natives called him the great Viramamouni. Scores of other missionaries might be named, equally devoted, equally learned. But they acquired science, Sanskrit, and Oriental erudition as a means, not an end. They sought no worldly distinction, no literary reputation. They had but one engrossing object and thought here below—their mission of charity and of love.

Nevertheless, the day of

Sanskrit For Europe,

long delayed, was now fast approaching. Its revelation to the West is generally ascribed to Sir William Jones. This assumption may be stated to be incorrect without in the slightest degree detracting from the merits of that distinguished English scholar. For more than a century before Sir William Jones went to India, the published letters of the Jesuit missionaries had established the existence and general characteristics of that remarkable tongue, the Sanskrit; and in 1740 (November 23), Father Pons, then at Karikal [Madura], addressed a letter to Father Duhalde, giving what Professor Max Müller describes as “a most interesting and, in general, a very accurate description of the various branches of Sanskrit literature; of the four Vedas, the grammatical treatises, the six systems of philosophy, and the astronomy of the Hindus. He anticipated, on several points, the researches of Sir William Jones.”

The letter in question was, in fact, an essay; and Father Pons so speaks of it. It fills sixteen closely printed octavo pages, and refers to the fact, not mentioned by Prof. Müller, that it is one of a succession of communications [pg 329] upon the same subject, inasmuch as he mentions a treatise written by himself on Sanskrit versification, transmitted to Europe the previous year, and specifies a Sanskrit grammar (Kramadisvar) which he sent two years before. Although Adelung, in his Mithridates, mildly censures both Father Pons and Sir W. Jones for exaggerating the value of Sanskrit, the exposition made by the former of the wealth of the Sanskrit language and literature is, to this day, held by distinguished scholars to be “very accurate.”

The Pons-Duhalde letter is often referred to, but seldom quoted. We will therefore here cite a few short passages from it, which may give the reader some idea of the nature of the communication and an early estimate of the value of Sanskrit. We translate: “The Brahmans have always been, and still are, the only class who devote themselves to the cultivation of the sciences as a matter of hereditary descent. They originally descend from seven illustrious penitents, whose progeny, in course of time, was multiplied infinitely, etc. They are exclusively consecrated to learning, and a Brahman who strictly adheres to the rule of his order should devote himself solely to religion and study; but, in course of time, many have fallen into a very lax life.

“These sciences are inaccessible to all the other castes of people, to whom it is permitted to communicate certain compositions, grammar, poetry, and moral sayings.”

“The grammar of the Brahmans may fairly be classed in the rank of works of science. Never were analysis and synthesis more happily employed than in their grammatical works on the Sanskrit language. I am satisfied that this language, so admirable in its harmony, its wealth, and its energy, was at some remote period the spoken tongue of the country inhabited by the first Brahmans.”

Parenthetically, and also by way of comparison, let us look for a moment at the impression made by Sanskrit upon two other distinguished scholars from among those who were earliest in the field—Sir William Jones and Frederick von Schlegel.

At the outset of his researches, the first declared that, whatever its antiquity, it was a language of most wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a strong affinity. “No philologer,” he adds, “could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be added to the same family.” And Frederick von Schlegel (Essay on the Language and Philosophy of the Indians) says: “The similarity between Sanskrit, on the one hand, and Latin and Greek, Teutonic and Persian, on the other, is found not only in a great number of roots possessed by them in common, but it also extends to the inner structure and grammar. The remarkable coincidence is not merely such an accidental one as may be explained by an admixture of language, but an essential one which points distinctly to a common descent. Comparison further shows that the Indian (Sanskrit) tongue is the more ancient, the others younger and derived from it.”

But to return to our missionaries. The interest excited in Europe by the remarkable letter of Father Pons [pg 330] was purely one of surprise and speculation, inasmuch as Western scholars were without the means of testing the value of the great linguistic discovery. Sanskrit grammars, dictionaries, and even vocabularies were then unknown in any European tongue. This want, however, was soon supplied by another missionary, John Philip Wesdin, more widely known as Father Paulinus a Santo-Bartolomeo. He spent thirteen years in India, and subsequently published (1790) at Rome, under the auspices of the Propaganda, several works on Sanskrit grammar and upon the history, theology, and religion of the Hindus.

Referring to his numerous publications (vielen Schriften), no less an authority than Adelung qualifies them as indispensable to a knowledge of Sanskrit as also to the other languages of India (welche zur Kentniss sowohl dieser Sprache als auch Indiens überhaupt unentbehrlich sind); and he adds (writing in 1806): “Peradventure has no European up to this time so deeply penetrated into this language as he.”140 Of his first Sanskrit grammar, published at Rome in 1790,141 Prof. Max Müller says: “Although this grammar has been severely criticised, and is now hardly ever consulted, it is but fair to bear in mind that the first grammar of any language is a work of infinitely greater difficulty than any later grammar.”

In this connection we must not omit some mention of that prodigy of linguistic industry and erudition, the Spanish Jesuit, Don Lorenzo Hervas y Pandura, who, in the midst of his missionary labors, collected specimens of more than three hundred languages.142 This of itself was a gigantic work, and its rich results furnished to Adelung an important portion of the material of his Mithridates. Hervas, moreover, prepared grammars for more than forty languages, and is the founder of the true method of ascertaining lingual affinity by grammatical analysis, rather than by etymology, always more or less deceptive. Klaproth's enunciation of this principle established by Hervas is so felicitous that we cannot refrain from citing it here: “Words are the stuff or matter of language, and grammar its fashioning or form.”

Concerning Hervas we need say no more than to add the noble tribute to his memory and his merits to be found in the pages of Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 140:

“He proved by a comparative list of declensions and conjugations that Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic are all but dialects of one original language, and constitute one family of speech, the Semitic. He scouted the idea of deriving all the languages of mankind from Hebrew. He had perceived clear traces of affinity in Hungarian, Lapponian, and Finnish—three dialects now classed as members of the Turanian family. He had proved that Basque was not, as was commonly supposed, a Celtic dialect, but an independent language, spoken by the earliest inhabitants of Spain, as proved by the names of the Spanish mountains and rivers. Nay, one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language, the establishment of the Malay and Polynesian family of speech, extending from the Island of Madagascar east of Africa, over 208° of longitude, to the Easter Islands west of America, was made [pg 331]by Hervas long before it was announced to the world by Humboldt.”

English literature has made us familiar with the name of Sir William Jones as the European originator of the cultivation of Sanskrit. The merits of Sir William Jones are not a subject of doubt or contest. Full justice has been done them. But when we come to settle the question of priority of successful and distinguished labor in the field of Sanskrit, the names and transcendent services of the humble and self-sacrificing missionaries, Robert de' Nobili, Roth, Hanxleder, Beschi, Pons, Paulinus a Santo-Bartolomeo, Hervas, and scores of others, their predecessors and companions, must ever be gratefully remembered.

The Triumph Of Sanskrit.

Through the publications of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, European scholars were now furnished with facilities for the study of Sanskrit, and it would be difficult to say which of the two, the language or the literature, excited the deeper or more lasting interest.

The absolute identity of grammatical forms of Greek and Latin with Sanskrit was at once recognized, and it was evident that these three languages sprang from one common source. The revelation created one of the greatest literary sensations ever known in Europe. The theory that upheld Hebrew as the mother tongue—already seriously damaged—now received its death-blow. Classical scholars shook their heads sceptically. Theologians were troubled. Ethnographers were all at sea. Etymologists and lexicographers were dumfounded. The philosophers of the day, each one of whom had his own little system of the universe to take care of, saw their theories ruthlessly upset; and Lord Monboddo, who had just finished his great work in which he derives mankind from a couple of apes, and all the dialects of the world from the language of the Egyptian gods, was petrified with astonishment. His Egyptian theory, his men with tails, and his monkeys without tails, were all equally doomed to destruction. To his credit, though, it must be said that he soon afterward accepted the situation with commendable intelligence and alacrity.

Other pet theories and other deeply ingrained prejudices of many scholars of the best education were shocked and scandalized at the claims set up for Sanskrit. The idea that the classical languages of Greece and Rome could be intimately related to a jargon of mere savages—as they supposed the natives of India to be—was to the last degree repugnant to these gentlemen, and they went great lengths in assertion, absurd argument, irony, and ridicule, to escape the, alas! too inevitable and horribly unpleasant conclusion that Greek and Latin were of the same linguistic kith and kin as the language of the black inhabitants of India. The distinguished Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, by way of protest against the claims set up for Sanskrit, even went so far as to deny that any such language existed or ever had existed, and wrote his famous essay to prove that those arch forgers and liars, the Brahmans, had manufactured the dialect on the model of the Greek and the Latin, and that the whole thing, language, literature, and all, was a piece of daring invention and bold imposture.

How deeply rooted were the prejudices, and how stubborn the ignorance, even among scholars and men of literary pursuits, in favor of the Hebrew and against the reception of Sanskrit in its place, may be judged from the representative fact, that [pg 332] so late as the ninth day of August, 1832, we find no less a man than Coleridge making this entry in his note-book: “The claims of the Sanskrit for priority to the Hebrew as a language are ridiculous.”

The first European scholar of distinction who dared boldly accept the facts and conclusions of Sanskrit scholarship was Frederick von Schlegel. He began his study of the language with verbal tuition from Sir Alexander Hamilton, continued it at Paris with the aid of M. Langles, custodian of Oriental MSS. in the Imperial Library at Paris, and subsequently had the advantage of the rich collection in the British Museum. The result was his Language and Wisdom of the Indians, published in 1808. It embraced in one glance the languages of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany, riveted them together by the name of Indo-Germanic (by common consent of scholars since changed to Indo-European), and became the foundation of the science of language. Appearing only two years after the publication of the first volume of Adelung's Mithridates, “it is separated from that work,” says Prof. Müller, “by the same distance which separates the Copernican from the Ptolemæan system,” and this work of Schlegel, he adds, “has truly been called the discovery of a new world.”

Omitting mention of the labors of many distinguished French and German laborers in the same field, we may close our record of the services rendered by Catholic scholars to the cause of Sanskrit literature by reference to the remarkable course of lectures on “Science and Revealed Religion,” delivered by the Reverend (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman, at Rome, in 1835,143 only two years and six months after the memorable entry of Coleridge in his note-book.

Sanskrit Literature And The Vedas.

It was perfectly natural that the fresh enthusiasm of the earliest Sanskrit scholars should have carried them into what is now looked upon as an undue estimate and hyperbolic praise of their new discovery and acquisition. And this early enthusiasm was neither short in duration nor limited in extent.

A tidal wave of admiration swept over European scholarship with the appearance of Sacontala, or The Fatal Ring (Calcutta, 1789), certainly a beautiful specimen of dramatic art and admirable poetry by Kalidasa, the Indian Shakespeare, who is assigned to the period of Vikrama the Great (b.c. 56). Sir William Jones very judiciously selected this masterpiece of Indian literature for translation as a first specimen, and, although in prose, it so delighted a French scholar, Chézy, that it induced him first to learn Sanskrit and then to publish a French version of it. This was followed by no less than four German translations, prose and verse, a Danish translation, and an additional English translation (the best) in a mingling of verse and prose (following the original) by Monier Williams. Goethe was enraptured with the Sacontala, and it drew from him the celebrated verse:

“Willt Du die Blüthe des Frühen, die Früchte des Späteren Jahres,

Willt Du, was reizt und entzückt, willt Du was sättigt und nährt,

Willt Du den Himmel, die Erde mit einem Namen begreifen,

Nenn ich, Sacontala, Dich, und so ist Alles gesagt.”144

[pg 333]

A. W. von Schlegel finds in it so striking a resemblance to our romantic drama that we might, he says, be inclined to suspect we owe this resemblance to the predilection for Shakespeare entertained by Sir William Jones, if the fidelity of his translation were not confirmed by other learned Orientalists. And Alex. von Humboldt says of Kalidasa that “tenderness in the expression of feeling, and richness of creative fancy, have assigned to him his lofty place amongst the poets of all nations.”

Voltaire went into ecstasies over a French translation of the Ezour-Veda, a Sanskrit poem in the style of the Purânas, quite an inferior production, written in the XVIIth century by a native convert of Robert de' Nobili. This French translation was published by Voltaire under the title, “L'Ezour-Vedam, traduit du Sanscritam par un Brame,” and he stated his belief that the original was four centuries older than Alexander, and that it was the most precious gift for which the West had been indebted to the East.

Adelung, as we have seen, found fault with Sir William Jones and Father Pons for overrating the claims of Sanskrit, and subsequent critics have gone so far as to assert that its literary and scientific value is very slight. Among the latest of these are M. Jules Oppert145 and Prof. Key of University College, London. Their objections and arguments are met and discussed by Prof. Whitney in the seventh essay of his volume, in a tone so moderate and a treatment so thorough as to present a more than satisfactory vindication of the claims of Indo-European philology and ethnology to the serious attention and close study of every scholar. We are not aware that either Prof. Key or M. Oppert has cited the fact that, when the Indian rajah Rammohun Roy found the distinguished Sanskrit scholar Rosen at work in the British Museum upon an edition of the hymns of the Veda, he expressed his surprise at so useless an undertaking. It was not that the Indian philosopher looked upon all Vedic literature as worthless. On the contrary, he was of the opinion that the Upanishads were worthy of becoming the foundation of a new religion. The rajah most probably did not also consider the fact that, whatever might be the intrinsic literary merit of the Vedic hymns, they were none the less valuable to the comparative grammarian and philologist. For the purposes of grammatical construction, it is perfectly immaterial whether or not a text has the fire of genius or the inspiration of poetry.

And here it may be mentioned that Rammohun Roy, the descendant on both the paternal and maternal side of the highest caste Brahmans, and familiar with the whole body of Vedic and Sanskrit literature, indirectly bears high testimony to one of the grandest results obtained by European study of Sanskrit literature. That result is the exposure of Brahmanism as a gross imposture. Against any attack on its social and religious errors, the Brahmans formerly entrenched themselves in the pretended warrant of high antiquity and the authority of the sacred works. “Thus say the Vedas” was a sufficient justification for any claim, and “That is not in the Vedas” an unanswerable argument against any objection. Although they threw every possible obstacle in the way of Europeans who strove to obtain a knowledge of Sanskrit and access to the Vedas, by refusing to teach them and by withholding the sacred books, these difficulties [pg 334] were finally overcome, and when the Vedas were read and understood it became apparent that fully one-half of the social and religious institutions of Brahmanism, as it existed down to the commencement of the present century, were not only without a shadow of authority in the Vedas, but absolutely opposed to the spirit and letter of its law. Thus, it is certain that nothing of the great characteristic feature of Brahmanism—the system of castes—can be found in the Vedas. The belief in the transmigration of souls and in the doctrines flowing from it has no existence there. And the Suttee, or system of widow immolation, the singular mingling of pantheistic philosophy with gross superstition, and the worship of the triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Civa, are all equally without Vedic foundation.

Robert de' Nobili discovered all this at an early period, and it was only when he first fought the Brahmans with their own weapons—the Vedas—that they were, for the first time, silenced. Rammohun Roy had his eyes opened at an early age to the idolatrous system of the Hindus, came out from among them, and openly attacked its pretensions. “I endeavored to show,” he says, “that the idolatry of the Brahmans was contrary to the practice of their ancestors, and to the principles of the ancient works and authorities which they profess to revere and obey.”

Prof. Whitney, referring to the same subject, says: “Each new phase of belief has sought in them (the sacred texts) its authority, has claimed to found itself upon them, and to be consistent with their teachings; and the result is that the sum of doctrine accepted and regarded as orthodox in modern India is incongruous beyond measure, a mass of inconsistencies”: a summing up that might, we regret to say, be truthfully made of a Christian country of far higher civilization than that of India.

Not stopping to discuss what has been called the “standing reproach” against Indian literature, that it is barren of historical and geographical results, nor to point out much that is of high value and interest to every scholar, we will close by an inquiring comment as to the following statement made by Prof. Whitney at p. 22. He is speaking of the Vedic texts, and says: “So thorough and religious was the care bestowed upon their preservation that, notwithstanding their mass and the thousands of years which have elapsed since their collection, hardly a single various reading, so far as yet known, has been suffered to make its way into them after their definite and final settlement.”

We have italicized the passage which we wish to make the subject of our inquiry, for, unless we are mistaken, two instances may be pointed out in which the texts in question have been garbled or seriously tampered with.

We find the first instance in the developments growing out of the discussion as to whether there are three Vedas or four Vedas (Goverdhan Caul on the “Literature of the Hindus,” Asiatic Researches, Calcutta, 1788, vol. i., p. 340, and Sir William Jones' Works, vol. iv. p. 93 (edition of 1807)). Even down to the present day, Indian scholars sometimes speak of three Vedas, sometimes of four. According to Indian tradition, Brahma has four mouths, each of which uttered a Veda. Yet most ancient writers speak of but three Vedas, Rig, Yajush, and Sama, from which it is inferred that the Atharva was written after the three first. The Atharva is spoken of and called the Veda of Vedas in [pg 335] the eleventh book of Manu, and the designation affirms the assertion of Dara Shecuh, in the preface to his Upanishad, that the first three Vedas are named separately, because the Atharvan is a corollary from them all, and contains the quintessence of them all. But this verse of Manu, which occurs in a modern copy of the work brought from Benares, is entirely omitted in the best copies, so that, as Manu himself in other places names only three Vedas, we must believe this line to be an interpolation by some admirer of the Atharva.

The second instance to be specified is furnished by Prof. Whitney himself, at pages 53, 54, and 55, where he gives a translation of a hymn from the concluding book of the Rig-Veda (x. 18), describing the early Vedic funeral services. When the attendants leave the bier, the men go first, while the director of the ceremony says:

“Ascend to life, old age your portion making, each after each, advancing in due order;

May Twashtar, skilful fashioner, propitious, cause that you here enjoy a long existence.”

The women next follow, the wives at their head:

“These women here, not widows, blessed with husbands,

May deck themselves with ointment and perfume;

Unstained by tears, adorned, untouched with sorrow,

The wives may first ascend unto the altar.”

The wife of the deceased is then summoned away the last:

“Go up unto the world of life, O woman!

Thou liest by one whose soul is fled; come hither!

To him who grasps thy hand, a second husband,

Thou art as wife to spouse become related.”

In commenting upon this hymn, Prof. Whitney notes its “discordance with the modern Hindu practice of immolating the widow at the grave of her husband,” and adds: “Nothing could be more explicit than the testimony of this hymn against the antiquity of the practice. It finds, indeed, no support anywhere in the Vedic scriptures.” And now we come to the “various reading,” for Prof. Whitney concludes the passage with this statement: “Authority has been sought, however, for the practice, in a fragment of this very hymn, rent from its natural connection, and a little altered; by the change of a single letter, the line which is translated above, ‘The wives may first ascend unto the altar,’ has been made to read, ‘The wives shall go up into the place of the fire.’ ”

We heartily welcome this work of Prof. Whitney, and thank him for it as a solid contribution to literature and to philological science, honorable to himself, and reflecting credit on American scholarship.

[pg 336]