SECTION C INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES 



(Hall 8, September 22, 10 a. m.) 



SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR SYLVAIN LEVI, College de France, Paris. 



PROFESSOR ARTHUR A. MACDONELL, University of Oxford. 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF SANSKRIT STUDIES IN THE 

 COURSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



BY SILVAIN LEVI 



(Translated from the French by Mabel Bode, Ph.D.) 



[Sylvain Levi, Professor of Sanskrit, College de France; Director of Studies at the 

 High School, Paris, since 1894. b. Paris, 1863. Litt.F. 1883; Litt.D. 1890. 

 Master of Conferences at the High School, 1885; Assistant Professor in Sanskrit 

 of the Faculty of Letters, Paris, 1889. Member of Asiatic Society, Linguistic 

 Society, Society of Hebrew Studies, etc. Author and editor of The Hindoo Theatre; 

 Traces of the Greeks left on the Monuments of the Ancient Hindoos; The Doctrine 

 of Sacrifice according to the Brahmanas; The Nepal.} 



AMONG the languages of the Indo-Iranian group Sanskrit takes 

 indisputably the highest place. I shall not make any attempt here 

 to justify this honor which Sanskrit owes to the length of its existence T 

 the wealth of its vocabulary, the vastness of its literature, and to its 

 role in history. It would be an easy task, and one flattering to the 

 heart of an Indianist, to take each of these points in turn and treat 

 each in detail. But I have put before myself another aim, more in 

 keeping with the general spirit of our meeting; I would like to show, 

 in dealing with Sanskrit, that a common impulse animates all the 

 efforts of human thought; the more those studies which I represent 

 seem far-away, indifferent, foreign alike to the passions and the 

 interests of real life, the better they will serve to support the thesis 

 I advance, if it be clearly shown that, in the course of their trans- 

 formations, they reflect the great ideas which lead humanity toward 

 its unknown goal. 



The history of Sanskrit studies goes hardly a century back; they 

 came into being with the Independence of the United States and 

 with the French Revolution. In 1785 Charles Wilkins published in 

 London a translation of the Bhagavad Gitd, prepared in India with 

 the assistance of native scholars; four years later William Jones 

 laid before Western readers a translation of Cakuntala". Before these 



