Sanscrit Writing and Language. 107 



I have already observed that the Hindoo grammarian, as having more inter- 

 course with the Greeks, is more likely to be indebted to them than to the 

 Romans for the completion of his alphabetic system ; and from the same quarter 

 he must, I conceive, have learned the very difficult and complicated mechanism 

 which is presented to our notice in the construction of the Sanscrit language. 

 That, betraying as he does, in some respects, considerable ignorance of the 

 genei'al principles of grammar,* he could not himself have discovered the ele- 

 ments of this mechanism, is perfectly obvious ; and there is no external source 

 from which he could have derived them except an European one. He could not 

 have been taught them by the Arabians, who did not acquire their own know- 

 ledge of grammar till long after the formation of the system in question, namely, 

 till after they had become acquainted with Greek literature ; and there is no 

 other Asiatic nation from which, even up to the present day, the requisite infor- 

 mation on the subject could be obtained. It is true that, as soon as a people 

 adopt the use of an alphabet, their writings may be made the subject of gram- 

 matlc analysis by those who are masters of the art ; rules may be traced out for 

 ascertaining strictly the meaning with which every expression is used ; and a 

 grammar of the language may be formed. But to suppose that the primitive 

 writers whose compositions admit of being thus analyzed, had themselves any 

 conception of the art by which this could be effected, is wholly unwarranted by 



* His choice of tenses, and his extending the use of the imperative mood to the first person 

 singular, are, I submit, instances of such ignorance. The tenses of the Sanscrit language are thus 

 given in Mr. Carey's Grammar : " The first tense is the present, the second the present dictative, 

 the third the imperative, the fourth the imperfect, the fifth the perfect, the sixth the preter-indefinite, 

 the seventh the future, the eighth the future benedictive, the ninth the future indefinite, and the 

 tenth the conditional," p. 131. We have here a confusion of moods and tenses quite incompatible 

 with the supposition of the Hindoo having arrived at his theory on the subject, which is in other 

 respects very subtile, merely by his own efforts of thought. Mr. Carey gives the following examples 

 of the use of the Sanscrit imperative in the first person, " Shall I read the Veda or Tarka ? — I want 

 something to eat," p. 878. Surely when expression is given to the desire irapUed in each of these 

 examples, the imperative immediately appears in the form belonging to the second person. " Tell 

 me, shall I read the Veda ?".— " Bring me something to eat." The same confusion of thought 

 appears also in the^Pandit's selection of moods ; which he has fixed to be " the indicative, the causal, 

 the optative, and the frequentative." — Carey's Gram. p. 131. If these names be correctly apphed, 

 the second and fourth forms of expression are not moods at all. The optative is, indeed, strictly 

 a mood ; but where is the use of a benedictive tense in a system in which this mood is employed ? 



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