lectures on the science of language 16

lectures on the science of language 16

Hervas was likewise aware of the great grammatical similarity between

Sanskrit and Greek, but the imperfect information which he received from

his friend, the Carmelite missionary, Fra Paolino de San Bartolomeo, the

author of the first Sanskrit grammar, published at Rome in 1790, prevented

him from seeing the full meaning of this grammatical similarity. How near

Hervas was to the discovery of the truth may be seen from his comparing

such words as _theos_, God, in Greek, with _Deva_, God, in Sanskrit. He

identified the Greek auxiliary verb _eimi_, _eis_, _esti_, I am, thou art,

he is, with the Sanskrit _asmi_, _asi_, _asti_. He even pointed out that

the terminations of the three genders(129) in Greek, _os_, _ē_, _on_, are

the same as the Sanskrit, _as_, _â_, _am_. But believing, as he did, that

the Greeks derived their philosophy and mythology from India,(130) he

supposed that they had likewise borrowed from the Hindus some of their

words, and even the art of distinguishing the gender of words.

 

The second work which represents the science of language at the beginning

of this century, and which is, to a still greater extent, the result of

the impulse which Leibniz had given, is the Mithridates of Adelung.(131)

Adelung’s work depends partly on Hervas, partly on the collections of

words which had been made under the auspices of the Russian government.

Now these collections are clearly due to Leibniz. Although Peter the Great

had no time or taste for philological studies, the government kept the

idea of collecting all the languages of the Russian empire steadily in

view.(132) Still greater luck was in store for the science of language.

Having been patronized by Cæsar at Rome, it found a still more devoted

patroness in the great Cesarina of the North, Catherine the Great

(1762-1796). Even as Grand-duchess Catherine was engrossed with the idea

of a Universal Dictionary, on the plan suggested by Leibniz. She

encouraged the chaplain of the British Factory at St. Petersburg, the Rev.

Daniel Dumaresq, to undertake the work, and he is said to have published,

at her desire, a “Comparative Vocabulary of Eastern Languages,” in quarto;

a work, however, which, if ever published, is now completely lost. The

reputed author died in London in 1805, at the advanced age of eighty-four.

When Catherine came to the throne, her plans of conquest hardly absorbed

more of her time than her philological studies; and she once shut herself

up nearly a year, devoting all her time to the compilation of her

Comparative Dictionary. A letter of hers to Zimmermann, dated the 9th of

May, 1785, may interest some of my hearers:—

 

“Your letter,” she writes, “has drawn me from the solitude in which I had

shut myself up for nearly nine months, and from which I found it hard to

stir. You will not guess what I have been about. I will tell you, for such

things do not happen every day. I have been making a list of from two to

three hundred radical words of the Russian language, and I have had them

translated into as many languages and jargons as I could find. Their

number exceeds already the second hundred. Every day I took one of these

words and wrote it out in all the languages which I could collect. This

has taught me that the Celtic is like the Ostiakian: that what means sky

in one language means cloud, fog, vault, in others; that the word God in

certain dialects means Good, the Highest, in others, sun or fire. (Up to

here her letter is written in French; then follows a line of German.) I

became tired of my hobby, after I had read your book on Solitude. (Then

again in French.) But as I should have been sorry to throw such a mass of

paper in the fire;—besides, the room, six fathoms in length, which I use

as a boudoir in my hermitage, was pretty well warmed—I asked Professor

Pallas to come to me, and after making an honest confession of my sin, we

agreed to publish these collections, and thus make them useful to those

who like to occupy themselves with the forsaken toys of others. We are

only waiting for some more dialects of Eastern Siberia. Whether the world

at large will or will not see in this work bright ideas of different

kinds, must depend on the disposition of their minds, and does not concern

me in the least.”

 

If an empress rides a hobby, there are many ready to help her. Not only

were all Russian ambassadors instructed to collect materials; not only did

German professors(133) supply grammars and dictionaries, but Washington

himself, in order to please the empress, sent her list of words to all

governors and generals of the United States, enjoining them to supply the

equivalents from the American dialects. The first volume of the Imperial

Dictionary(134) appeared in 1787, containing a list of 285 words

translated into fifty-one European, and 149 Asiatic languages. Though full

credit should be given to the empress for this remarkable undertaking, it

is but fair to remember that it was the philosopher who, nearly a hundred

years before, sowed the seed that fell into good ground.

 

As collections, the works of Hervas, of the Empress Catherine, and of

Adelung, are highly important, though, such is the progress made in the

classification of languages during the last fifty years, that few people

would now consult them. Besides, the principle of classification which is

followed in these works can hardly claim to be called scientific.

Languages are arranged geographically, as the languages of Europe, Asia,

Africa, America, and Polynesia, though, at the same time, natural

affinities are admitted which would unite dialects spoken at a distance of

208 degrees. Languages seemed to float about like islands on the ocean of

human speech; they did not shoot together to form themselves into larger

continents. This is a most critical period in the history of every

science, and if it had not been for a happy accident, which, like an

electric spark, caused the floating elements to crystallize into regular

forms, it is more than doubtful whether the long list of languages and

dialects, enumerated and described in the works of Hervas and Adelung,

could long have sustained the interest of the student of languages. This

electric spark was the discovery of Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the ancient

language of the Hindus. It had ceased to be a spoken language at least 300

B. C. At that time the people of India spoke dialects standing to the

ancient Vedic Sanskrit in the relation of Italian to Latin. We know some

of these dialects, for there were more than one in various parts of India,

from the inscriptions which the famous King Aśoka had engraved on the

rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri, and which have been deciphered

by Prinsep, Norris, Wilson, and Burnouf. We can watch the further growth

of these local dialects in the so-called _Pâli_, the sacred language of

Buddhism in Ceylon, and once the popular dialect of the country where

Buddhism took its origin, the modern Behár, the ancient Magadha.(135) We

meet the same local dialects again in what are called the Prâkrit idioms,

used in the later plays, in the sacred literature of the Jainas, and in a

few poetical compositions; and we see at last how, through a mixture with

the languages of the various conquerors of India, the Arabic, Persian,

Mongolic, and Turkish, and through a concomitant corruption of their

grammatical system, they were changed into the modern Hindí, Hindustání,

Mahrattí, and Bengálí. During all this time, however, Sanskrit continued

as the literary language of the Brahmans. Like Latin, it did not die in

giving birth to its numerous offspring; and even at the present day, an

educated Brahman would write with greater fluency in Sanskrit than in

Bengálí. Sanskrit was what Greek was at Alexandria, what Latin was during

the Middle Ages. It was the classical and at the same time the sacred

language of the Brahmans, and in it were written their sacred hymns, the

Vedas, and the later works, such as the laws of Manu and the Purâņas.

 

The existence of such a language as the ancient idiom of the country, and

the vehicle of a large literature, was known at all times; and if there

are still any doubts, like those expressed by Dugald Stewart in his

“Conjectures concerning the Origin of the Sanskrit,”(136) as to its age

and authenticity, they will be best removed by a glance at the history of

India, and at the accounts given by the writers of different nations that

became successively acquainted with the language and literature of that

country.

 

The argument that nearly all the names of persons and places in India

mentioned by Greek and Roman writers are pure Sanskrit, has been handled

so fully and ably by others, that nothing more remains to be said.

 

The next nation after the Greeks that became acquainted with the language

and literature of India was the Chinese. Though Buddhism was not

recognized as a third state-religion before the year 65 A. D., under the

Emperor Ming-ti,(137) Buddhist missionaries reached China from India as

early as the third century B. C. One Buddhist missionary is mentioned in

the Chinese annals in the year 217; and about the year 120 B. C., a

Chinese general, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the desert

of Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue, the statue of Buddha.

The very name of Buddha, changed in Chinese into Fo-t’o and Fo,(138) is

pure Sanskrit, and so is every word and every thought of that religion.

The language which the Chinese pilgrims went to India to study, as the key

to the sacred literature of Buddhism, was Sanskrit. They call it Fan; but

Fan, as M. Stanislas Julien has shown, is an abbreviation of Fan-lan-mo,

and this is the only way in which the Sanskrit Brahman could be rendered

in Chinese.(139) We read of the Emperor Ming-ti, of the dynasty of Han,

sending Tsaï-in and other high officials to India, in order to study there

the doctrine of Buddha. They engaged the services of two learned

Buddhists, Matânga and Tchou-fa-lan, and some of the most important

Buddhist works were translated by them into Chinese. The intellectual

intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern continent of

Asia continued uninterrupted for several centuries. Missions were sent

from China to India to report on the religious, political, social, and

geographical state of the country; and the chief object of interest, which

attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the Himalayan

mountains, was the religion of Buddha. About 300 years after the public

recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti, the great stream of

Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to India. The first account

which we possess of these pilgrimages refers to the travels of Fa-hian,

who visited India towards the end of the fourth century. His travels were

translated into French by A. Remusat. After Fa-hian, we have the travels

of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in 518, by command of

the empress, with the view of collecting sacred books and relics. Then

followed Hiouen-thsang, whose life and travels, from 629-645, have been

rendered so popular by the excellent translation of M. Stanislas Julien.

After Hiouen-thsang the principal works of Chinese pilgrims are the

Itineraries of the Fifty-six Monks, published in 730, and the travels of

Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head of 300 pilgrims.

 

That the language employed for literary purposes in India during all this

time was Sanskrit, we learn, not only from the numerous names and

religious and philosophical terms mentioned in the travels of the Chinese

pilgrims, but from a short paradigm of declension and conjugation in

Sanskrit which one of them (Hiouen-thsang) has inserted in his diary.

 

As soon as the Muhammedans entered India, we hear of translations of

Sanskrit works into Persian and Arabic.(140) Harun-al-Rashid (786-809) had

two Indians, Manka and Saleh, at his court as physicians. Manka translated

the classical work on medicine, Suśruta, and a treatise on poisons,

ascribed to Châņakya, from Sanskrit into Persian.(141) During the

Chalifate of Al Mámúm, a famous treatise on Algebra was translated by

Muhammed ben Musa from Sanskrit into Arabic (edited by F. Rosen).

 

About 1000 A. D., Abu Rihan al Birúni (born 970, died 1038) spent forty

years in India, and composed his excellent work, the Taríkhu-l-Hind, which

gives a complete account of the literature and sciences of the Hindus at

that time. Al Birúni had been appointed by the Sultan of Khawarazm to

accompany an embassy which he sent to Mahmud of Ghazni and Masud of

Lahore. The learned Avicenna had been invited to join the same embassy,

but had declined. Al Birúni must have acquired a complete knowledge of

Sanskrit, for he not only translated one work on the Sânkhya, and another

on the Yoga philosophy, from Sanskrit into Arabic, but likewise two works from Arabic into Sanskrit.(142)