Wilson Philological Lectures on Sanskrit and the Derived Languages c6.10.2

c6.10.2

This led to comparative philology and the classification of languages, and a comparison of the words and forms in the different languages led scholars into the secrets of the growth of human speech, and the science of language was added to the list of existing branches of knowledge. The progress made within about fifty years is marvellous, and affords a striking instance of the intellectual activity of the Europeans. In the cultivation of philology and the elaboration of this new science the Germans, of all other nations, have been most prominent, and have done by far the greater portion of the work. The more limited field of Prâkṛit philology with which we are here concerned has not been left uncultivated. Pâli, the earliest of the Prâkṛit dialects, is almost as much studied in Europe as Sanskrit. We have editions of Pâli texts by Turnour, a Ceylon Civilian, and a Danish scholar, Fausböll; and of a Native Grammar by Kachchâyana, by M. Senart, a Frenchman; an original treatise on this subject by Clough, and a very useful Dictionary by the late lamented Professor Childers.³ The derivation of the language from Sanskrit forms the subject of an essay by the great French scholar, M. Burnouf, and the equally great German scholar, Professor Lassen. There are notices of the Prâkṛit dialects in one of Colebrooke’s essays and in the preface to Professor Wilson’s Hindu Theatre.