Wilson Philological Lectures on Sanskrit and the Derived Languages c6.48

c6.48

I have used the word style in describing this movement, to show what important changes in the structure of a language may originate from what is in the beginning but a style or mode of speaking or writing. If everybody thought and spoke about all matters as the Naiyâyika does in his own subject our language would be just like his. It would almost have no verbs, no participles, and no cases except one or two. But it is not so. The movement could not be carried so far in other subjects. Hence the real classical Sanskrit is the Sanskrit of the Epics, the Purâṇas, the metrical law-books, the better or earlier specimens of Kâvyas or poems and dramatic plays, and of the early philosophical or exegetical works. And if we examine this literature we shall find that the greater use of attributive or nominal forms of expression gradually drove out a large portion of the Sanskrit verb, and gave a new character to the language, which may be thus described :—Very few verbal forms are used besides those of such tenses as the Present and Future; participles are frequently met with; the verbal forms of some roots, especially of those belonging to the less comprehensive classes, have gone out of use, and in their place we often have a noun expressive of the special action and a verb expressive of action generally; compound words are somewhat freely employed; and a good many of the Taddhita forms or nominal derivatives have disappeared, and in their stead we have periphrastic expressions. If the treatises of Pâṇini and others had perished, and we had to construct a grammar of the Sanskrit from the classical literature I have above indicated, our Verb and the Taddhita portion would be very meagre. Professor Benfey attributes the condition which the language thus assumed to the influence of the Prâkṛits or the spoken vernaculars. But the process appears to me perfectly natural, and no such influence need be supposed. The change may in some respects be likened to that which rendered the Vedic subjunctive and other grammatical forms obsolete in the later stage of the language. The Prâkṛits may have given some words to the Sanskrit, but that they should in this manner have influenced its grammatical structure is very unlikely. It is more natural to suppose that it was the Sanskrit from which the Prâkṛits evidently sprang which gave to these latter their peculiar character. I shall endeavour to determine the exact relation between the Sanskrit and these dialects in the concluding lecture.