lectures on the science of language 17

lectures on the science of language 17

About 1150 we hear of Abu Saleh translating a work on the education of

kings from Sanskrit into Arabic.(143)

 

Two hundred years later, we are told that Firoz Shah, after the capture of

Nagarcote, ordered several Sanskrit works on philosophy to be translated

from Sanskrit by Maulána Izzu-d-din Khalid Khani. A work on veterinary

medicine ascribed to Sálotar,(144) said to have been the tutor of Suśruta,

was likewise translated from Sanskrit in the year 1381. A copy of it was

preserved in the Royal Library of Lucknow.

 

Two hundred years more bring us to the reign of Akbar (1556-1605). A more

extraordinary man never sat on the throne of India. Brought up as a

Muhammedan, he discarded the religion of the Prophet as

superstitious,(145) and then devoted himself to a search after the true

religion. He called Brahmans and fire-worshippers to his court, and

ordered them to discuss in his presence the merits of their religions with

the Muhammedan doctors. When he heard of the Jesuits at Goa, he invited

them to his capital, and he was for many years looked upon as a secret

convert to Christianity. He was, however, a rationalist and deist, and

never believed anything, as he declared himself, that he could not

understand. The religion which he founded, the so-called Ilahi religion,

was pure Deism mixed up with the worship of the sun(146) as the purest and

highest emblem of the Deity. Though Akbar himself could neither read nor

write,(147) his court was the home of literary men of all persuasions.

Whatever book, in any language, promised to throw light on the problems

nearest to the emperor’s heart, he ordered to be translated into Persian.

The New Testament(148) was thus translated at his command; so were the

Mahâbhârata, the Râmâyaņa, the Amarakosha,(149) and other classical works

of Sanskrit literature. But though the emperor set the greatest value on

the sacred writings of different nations, he does not seem to have

succeeded in extorting from the Brahmans a translation of the Veda. A

translation of the Atharva-veda(150) was made for him by Haji Ibrahim

Sirhindi; but that Veda never enjoyed the same authority as the other

three Vedas; and it is doubtful even whether by Atharva-veda is meant more

than the Upanishads, some of which may have been composed for the special

benefit of Akbar. There is a story which, though evidently of a legendary

character, shows how the study of Sanskrit was kept up by the Brahmans

during the reign of the Mogul emperors.

 

“Neither the authority (it is said) nor promises of Akbar could prevail

upon the Brahmans to disclose the tenets of their religion: he was

therefore obliged to have recourse to artifice. The stratagem he made use

of was to cause an infant, of the name of _Feizi_, to be committed to the

care of these priests, as a poor orphan of the sacerdotal line, who alone

could be initiated into the sacred rites of their theology. Feizi, having

received the proper instructions for the part he was to act, was conveyed

privately to Benares, the seat of knowledge in Hindostan; he was received

into the house of a learned Brahman, who educated him with the same care

as if he had been his son. After the youth had spent ten years in study,

Akbar was desirous of recalling him; but he was struck with the charms of

the daughter of his preceptor. The old Brahman laid no restraint on the

growing passion of the two lovers. He was fond of Feizi, and offered him

his daughter in marriage. The young man, divided between love and

gratitude, resolved to conceal the fraud no longer, and, falling at the

feet of the Brahman, discovered the imposture, and asked pardon for his

offences. The priest, without reproaching him, seized a poniard which hung

at his girdle, and was going to plunge it in his heart, if Feizi had not

prevented him by taking hold of his arm. The young man used every means to

pacify him, and declared himself ready to do anything to expiate his

treachery. The Brahman, bursting into tears, promised to pardon him on

condition that he should swear never to translate the _Vedas_, or sacred

volumes, or disclose to any person whatever the symbol of the Brahman

creed. Feizi readily promised him: how far he kept his word is not known;

but the sacred books of the Indians have never been translated.”(151)

 

We have thus traced the existence of Sanskrit, as the language of

literature and religion of India, from the time of Alexander to the reign

of Akbar. A hundred years after Akbar, the eldest son of Shah Jehan, the

unfortunate Dárá, manifested the same interest in religious speculations

which had distinguished his great grandsire. He became a student of

Sanskrit, and translated the Upanishads, philosophical treatises appended

to the Vedas, into Persian. This was in the year 1657, a year before he

was put to death by his younger brother, the bigoted Aurengzebe. This

prince’s translation was translated into French by Anquetil Duperron, in

the year 1795, the fourth year of the French Republic; and was for a long

time the principal source from which European scholars derived their

knowledge of the sacred literature of the Brahmans.

 

At the time at which we have now arrived, the reign of Aurengzebe

(1658-1707), the cotemporary and rival of Louis XIV., the existence of

Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature was known, if not in Europe generally, at

least to Europeans in India, particularly to missionaries. Who was the

first European, that knew of Sanskrit, or that acquired a knowledge of

Sanskrit, is difficult to say. When Vasco de Gama landed at Calicut, on

the 9th of May, 1498, Padre Pedro began at once to preach to the natives,

and had suffered a martyr’s death before the discoverer of India returned

to Lisbon. Every new ship that reached India brought new missionaries; but

for a long time we look in vain in their letters and reports for any

mention of Sanskrit or Sanskrit literature. Francis, now St. Francis

Xavier, was the first to organize the great work of preaching the Gospel

in India (1542); and such were his zeal and devotion, such his success in

winning the hearts of high and low, that his friends ascribed to him,

among other miraculous gifts, the gift of tongues(152)—a gift never

claimed by St. Francis himself. It is not, however, till the year 1559

that we first hear of the missionaries at Goa studying, with the help of a

converted Brahman,(153) the theological and philosophical literature of

the country, and challenging the Brahmans to public disputations.

 

The first certain instance of a European missionary having mastered the

difficulties of the Sanskrit language, belongs to a still later period,—to

what may be called the period of Roberto de Nobili, as distinguished from

the first period, which is under the presiding spirit of Francis Xavier.

Roberto de Nobili went to India in 1606. He was himself a man of high

family, of a refined and cultivated mind, and he perceived the more

quickly the difficulties which kept the higher castes, and particularly

the Brahmans, from joining the Christian communities formed at Madura and

other places. These communities consisted chiefly of men of low rank, of

no education, and no refinement. He conceived the bold plan of presenting

himself as a Brahman, and thus obtaining access to the high and noble, the

wise and learned, in the land. He shut himself up for years, acquiring in

secret a knowledge, not only of Tamil and Telugu, but of Sanskrit. When,

after a patient study of the language and literature of the Brahmans, he

felt himself strong enough to grapple with his antagonists, he showed

himself in public, dressed in the proper garb of the Brahmans, wearing

their cord and their frontal mark, observing their diet, and submitting

even to the complicated rules of caste. He was successful, in spite of the

persecutions both of the Brahmans, who were afraid of him, and of his own

fellow-laborers, who could not understand his policy. His life in India,

where he died as an old blind man, is full of interest to the missionary.

I can only speak of him here as the first European Sanskrit scholar. A man

who could quote from Manu, from the Purâņas, and even from works such as

the Âpastamba-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,(154) which had been lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak

points of the theological system which he came to conquer. It is

surprising that the reports which he sent to Rome, in order to defend

himself against the charge of idolatry, and in which he drew a faithful

picture of the religion, the customs, and literature of the Brahmans,

should not have attracted the attention of scholars. The “Accommodation

Question,” as it was called, occupied cardinals and popes for many years;

but not one of them seems to have perceived the extraordinary interest

attaching to the existence of an ancient civilization so perfect and so

firmly rooted as to require accommodation even from the missionaries of

Rome. At a time when the discovery of one Greek MS. would have been hailed

by all the scholars of Europe, the discovery of a complete literature was

allowed to pass unnoticed. The day of Sanskrit had not yet come.

 

The first missionaries who succeeded in rousing the attention of European

scholars to the extraordinary discovery that had been made were the French

Jesuit missionaries, whom Louis XIV. had sent out to India after the

treaty of Ryswick, in 1697.(155) Father Pons drew up a comprehensive

account of the literary treasures of the Brahmans; and his report, dated

Karikal (dans le Maduré), November 23, 1740, and addressed to Father

Duhalde, was published in the “Lettres édifiantes.”(156) Father Pons gives

in it 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.

 

But, although the letter of Father Pons excited a deep interest, that

interest remained necessarily barren, as long as there were no grammars,

dictionaries, and Sanskrit texts to enable scholars in Europe to study

Sanskrit in the same spirit in which they studied Greek and Latin. The

first who endeavored to supply this want was a Carmelite friar, a German

of the name of Johann Philip Wesdin, better known as Paulinus a Santo

Bartholomeo. He was in India from 1776 to 1789; and he published the first

grammar of Sanskrit at Rome, in 1790. 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.(157)

 

We have thus seen how the existence of the Sanskrit language and

literature was known ever since India had first been discovered by

Alexander and his companions. But what was not known was, that this

language, as it was spoken at the time of Alexander, and at the time of

Solomon, and for centuries before his time, was intimately related to

Greek and Latin, in fact, stood to them in the same relation as French to

Italian and Spanish. The history of what may be called European Sanskrit

philology dates from the foundation of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, in

1784.(158) It was through the labors of Sir William Jones, Carey, Wilkins,

Forster, Colebrooke, and other members of that illustrious Society, that

the language and literature of the Brahmans became first accessible to

European scholars; and it would be difficult to say which of the two, the

language or the literature, excited the deepest and most lasting interest.

It was impossible to look, even in the most cursory manner, at the

declensions and conjugations, without being struck by the extraordinary

similarity, or, in some cases, by the absolute identity of the grammatical

forms in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. As early as 1778, Halhed remarked, in

the preface to his Grammar of Bengalí,(159) “I have been astonished to

find this similitude of Sanskrit words with those of Persian and Arabic,

and even of Latin and Greek; and these not in technical and metaphorical

terms, which the mutuation of refined arts and improved manners might have

occasionally introduced; but in the main groundwork of language, in

monosyllables, in the names of numbers, and the appellations of such

things as could be first discriminated on the immediate dawn of

civilization.” Sir William Jones (died 1794), after the first glance at

Sanskrit, 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 writes, “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.”

 

But how was that affinity to be explained? People were completely taken by

surprise. Theologians shook their heads; classical scholars looked

sceptical; philosophers indulged in the wildest conjectures in order to

escape from the only possible conclusion which could be drawn from the

facts placed before them, but which threatened to upset their little

systems of the history of the world. Lord Monboddo had just finished his

great work(160) in which he derives all mankind from a couple of apes, and

all the dialects of the world from a language originally framed by some

Egyptian gods,(161) when the discovery of Sanskrit came on him like a

thunder-bolt. It must be said, however, to his credit, that he at once

perceived the immense importance of the discovery. He could not be

expected to sacrifice his primæval monkeys or his Egyptian idols; but,

with that reservation, the conclusions which he drew from the new evidence

placed before him by his friend Mr. Wilkins, the author of one of our

first Sanskrit grammars, are highly creditable to the acuteness of the

Scotch judge. “There is a language,” he writes(162) (in 1792), “still

existing, and preserved among the Bramins of India, which is a richer and

in every respect a finer language than even the Greek of Homer. All the

other languages of India have a great resemblance to this language, which

is called the Shanscrit. But those languages are dialects of it, and

formed from it, not the Shanscrit from them. Of this, and other

particulars concerning this language, I have got such certain information

from India, that if I live to finish my history of man, which I have begun

in my third volume of ‘Antient Metaphysics,’ I shall be able clearly to

prove that the Greek is derived from the Shanscrit, which was the antient

language of Egypt, and was carried by the Egyptians into India, with their

other arts, and into Greece by the colonies which they settled there.”