Pioneering study in linguistics

THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE : T. Burrow. Published by Motilal Banarsidass Pvt. Ltd., 41, U.A. Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar, Delhi-110001. Rs. 450.

THE BOOK under review is the first Indian edition of the original work that appeared in the U.K. in 1955. Prof. Burrow was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford. His contributions to the fields of philology, linguistics and Dravidian studies are quite well-known to the world of scholars.

He collaborated with Prof. Emeneau in preparing the epoch-making Dravidian Etymological Dictionary. His work in the field of middle Indo-Aryan Languages is also quite significant.

The present work of his on Sanskrit Language gives an authentic and comprehensive account of various aspects of this Indo- European Language.

In eight chapters he has done an in-depth study of Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages such as Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic and Slavonic, presented an outline of the History of the Sanskrit Language, its phonology, the formation of nouns, their declension, numerals, pronouns, indeclinables, verbs and loan words.

The "discovery" of Sanskrit by European scholars towards the end of the 18th century was the starting point from which developed the study of the comparative philology of the Indo-European languages and subsequently the whole science of modern linguistics.

No work was written by scholars which provides a systematic account of this language in relation to the sister languages of the Indo-European group. In fact Sanskrit is quite useful to study the Indo-European Languages because of its antiquity and well-preserved structure. The work of Prof. Burrow thus has fulfilled a long-felt desideratum in the world of comparative philology.

Sir William Jones, in his famous address to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786 observed: "The Sanskrit Language, whatever be its antiquity, is of 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 stronger affinity both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed that no philologer could examine them at all without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists."

Prof. Burrow observes that the truth of these remarks had been adequately demonstrated by the subsequent development of the science of comparative philology which dates from this time.

The main features of the parent language have been reliably reconstructed and the historical and pre-historical development of the several branches had been worked out in detail by scholars.

New discoveries have been made and this led to a wider and deeper understanding of the subject.

The entire gamut of the science of linguistics thus came into existence as a result of the stimulus provided by the discovery of Sanskrit.

Insofar as the history of the Sanskrit language is concerned, Prof. Burrow states that from the very beginning, from the time of the composition of the Vedic hymns and establishment thereby of a recognised literary language, there was a strong tendency among the guardians of this literature and of the religious and social system that went with it, to preserve the language against change.

This applied not only to the preservation of the sacred texts themselves, but also to the language of everyday speech and in the royal courts with which the classical writers were always closely associated.

This led to a growing divergence between the language of the educated classes and that of the ordinary masses. At the same time, the language of the elite did not remain without chance, in spite of the influence of the conscious conservatism.

The classical language as fixed by Panini is a noticeably younger form of language than that found in the Vedas although much less altered from it than the spoken language of the masses, which is known slightly later from the inscriptions of Asoka. Once Panini's monumental Astadhyayi appeared, Sanskrit in its external form became finally stabilised and no more changes were allowed.

From that time onwards, history of Indo-Aryan means history of the Middle Indo-Aryan in its various phases (Pali, Prakrit, Apabhramas) and then of modern Indo-Aryan. In this evolution Sanskrit took no part at all.

The richness of Sanskrit depends upon its verbal roots. Although the roots of this language, as enumerated by the Hindu grammarians, comprise a list of some 2000, about half of these are not attested in actual use and may, for all practical purposes, be ignored.

Of the rest, a considerable number may be dismissed as being either reduplications, stem forms, denominatives etc. When allowance is made for all these, there remain around 800 roots, which form the basis not only of the verbal system but also the larger part of the inherited nominal stems of the language.

Prof. Burrow points out that there was a linguistic revolution toward the beginning of the Christian era in so far as the Buddhist and Jain literatures are concerned. The Buddhists and the more conservative Jains also began to use Sanskrit profusely for their canonical writings. Propagation of religion was of paramount importance to them and in this process, using Sanskrit of Brahmanical preference was no bar to them. For instance Asvaghosha (A.D. 100), author of the Buddhacharita chose Sanskrit as a vehicle of propaganda.

The sign of any living language is its capacity to borrow, absorb, adopt ad adapt words from other linguistic sources without any inhibition and Sasnkrit is no exception to this phenomenon.

Writing about the loan words in Sanskrit, Prof. Burrow points out that there are two practical sources where the origin of the non- Aryan element in Sanskrit may be sought, namely the Munda and the Dravidian languages. But the most important linguistic family which influenced the vocabulary of Sanskrit is the Dravidian. Burrow illustrates this point with long lists of words. He has also dealt with the influence of the Greek and Iranian languages on Sanskrit.

The book which is a pioneering work in the field of linguistics ad Indology, provides a very useful and interesting information about Sanskrit language which has remained the vehicle of India's rich religious, cultural and literary writings down the centuries.

M.NARASIMHACHARY

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