LETTER II.

I THANK you for your very kind though very short letter, and in reply to your question about the Sanscrit, I have only to say that I do not think it would be worth your while to begin to study it, unless you had a prospect of a much longer residence in the East, than I trust you look forward to. But that your curiosity respecting it may not be wholly unsatisfied, I shall give you a short account of that venerable tongue, and of some of the languages derived from it, which I have taken from Mr. Colebrooke's interesting essay on the subject.

Were all other monuments swept away from the face of Hindostan, were its inhabitants destroyed, and its name forgotten, the existence of the Sanscrit language would prove that it once contained a race who had reached a high degree of refinement, and who must have been blest with many rare advantages before such a language could have been formed and polished. Amidst the wreck of the nations where it flourished, and superior to the havoc of war and of conquest, it remains a venerable monument of the splendor of other times, as the solid pyra mid in the deserts of Egypt attests, that where now the whirlwind drives the overwhelming

sand-wave, and plows up the loose and barre dust, a numerous population once enlivened the plain, and the voice of industry once gladdened the woods.

The languages of India are usually reckoned to be four.

The Sanscrit or language of the gods.

The Prácrit or spoken language.

The Paisachi or language of the demons.
The Magad❜hi.

Some writers however substitute for the two latter the Apabhransa or Jargon, and the Misra or mixed language.

The word Sanscrit literally means adorned, and that language is indeed highly polished; it is cultivated throughout India as the language of science and literature, of laws and religion; and of its great antiquity some comparative idea may be formed from the time in which most of the elegant poets flourished, which was about the century preceding the Christian æra. Now, many ages must have elapsed, before so rich, so perfect a language could have been framed, and its rules so accurately fixed. "It evidently draws its origin (says Mr. Colebrooke) from a primeval tongue which was gradually refined in different climates, and became Sanscrit in India, Pelavi in Persia, and Greek on the shores of the Mediterranean."

Although the Sanscrit is now a dead language, it was probably at one period the spoken language of most parts of India, and the objections which might be made to this opinion, such as the inordinate length of the compound words, and the strict rules for the permutation of letters in these compounds, are obviated by the fluency with which those persons deliver themselves who still speak the language.

I think that, from the fragments of the history and literature of the Bramins which have been translated and from these only I can judgewe are authorized to conclude, that excepting in times of great civil commotion or religious wars, the Bramins lived a life of retired indolence; not, indeed, like the western monks, withdrawn from domestic cares within the walls of a monastery, but in sacred groves and caverned rocks, where, surrounded by their pupils and their slaves, they cultivated poetry, music, and astronomy; and only deigned to appear in the active world to receive the homage of a court, and direct its monarchs; or sometimes to pronounce on them the malediction, which was almost sure to be followed by the desertion of their servants and the rebellion of their subjects.

It was in these retirements that, given up to study, the Bramins perfected their sacred language, and composed those numerous and pro

found treatises of grammar, which have since employed so many commentators, whose works have been considered as of such high consequence, that the writers are said to have been inspired. Of the original treatises, the grammar of Panini is the most ancient that remains to us, and of the highest authority: but its great antiquity and studied brevity have required and received numerous scholiæ, all esteemed divine. The Amera-cosha, the most esteemed of all the vocabularies, was composed by Amera Sinha, one of the nine poets who adorned the court of Vrcramaditya*, and who was either a Jaina or a Baud'ha: his work has passed through the hands of numerous commentators, and many vocabu laries have been formed to supply its deficiences, besides various nomenclatures, and the Nighanti of the Vedas, which explains obsolete words and unusual acceptations.

The Prácrit language formerly included all the written dialects used in the common inter. course of life, and cultivated by men of letters; but the term Prácrit is now commonly restricted to the language spoken on the banks of the Seraswattee.

There appear to have been ten polished dia

*It is doubted whether this is the Vreramaditya, King of Onjein, who gave name to the chronological æra, and who flourished 56 years before Christ, or a later monarch, sometimes called Raja Bhoja.

lects in India, prevailing in as many different civilized nations, who occupied the provinces of Hindoostan and the Deckan.

: The Saraswati was a people which occupied the banks of the river Seraswattee, and the Bramins of that nation now inhabit the Panjab. Their language may have prevailed over the southern and western parts of Hindoostan Proper, and is probably the idiom called Prácrit. It is a cultivated language, and great part of most dramas, and many poems, are written in it.

The Canyacubjas possessed a great empire, the capital of which was Cannoge. Their language seems to be the groundwork of the modern Hindustani or Hindwi, of which there are two dialects, in the most refined of which there are numerous poems, and both abound in songs, or rather ballads, and odes. Well educated people in Hindustan and the Deckan, use this language, and there is scarcely a village where some of the inhabitants do not understand it; which I beg you to observe, is the reason I particularly advised you to study it, that you may not be among those speakers of jargon, whom one hears violating all the rules of grammar and good sense, at our settlements in India, till they have actually produced a tongue