104 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGE 



which a nobleman had brought from India and presented to him as 

 a book " translated from the Sanscretan by the high-priest or arch- 

 brahman of the pagoda of Chiringham, an aged man respected for 

 his incorruptible virtue." In reality the original "Sanscretan" had 

 never existed, and the arch-brahman was a Jesuit missionary. The 

 author of the clever imitation had hoped to lead the Hindus to the 

 Christian religion by this pious fraud; if he did not succeed in that, 

 he at least succeeded in duping Voltaire, and might rest satisfied. 

 But now the Sanskrit language, studied and taught in Europe, gave 

 access to the real Veda. The Brahmans persisted as long as they 

 could in defending this coveted treasure from the enterprise of profane 

 men of science; their delays and refusals only served to pique curiosity 

 and inflame imagination all the more. According to them the Veda 

 had no date, it went back beyond all time, back to a past impossible 

 to calculate. They easily imposed their conviction on the earliest 

 interpreters. At last the Aryan race had its Bible; an Aryan Bible. 

 But the Veda was not accommodating; written in an archaic tongue 

 which differed from classical Sanskrit even more than Homer from 

 Plato, bestrewn with puzzling forms and disused words, it seemed 

 to defy the sagacity of philologists. The only help afforded by India 

 was a commentary too late to be authoritative. On these ancient 

 texts was expended a wealth of science, of shrewdness, of patience, 

 and almost of genius. But a foregone conclusion, an unconscious 

 parti pris, direpted and influenced these efforts. There was a desire 

 to give the Aryans of Europe worthy ancestors. The German scholars 

 who occupied the first rank in philology had naturally substituted 

 for the title Aryan or Indo-European a word which flattered national 

 amour propre; they spoke of the Indo-Germanic language, of the 

 Indo-Germanic race. Thenceforward the Vedas were the complement 

 of the Niebelungen. The origins of religion took their place beside 

 the origins of the epic. It was pleasant to picture the singers of the 

 ancient hymns as grave and noble patriarchs, thoughtful, devout, 

 austere, patriarchs formed on the romantic model; their candid soul, 

 filled with enthusiasm for the grand spectacles of nature, poured 

 itself forth in lyric effusions. Lost in the radiance of the Veda, In- 

 dianism forfeited its independence and placed itself like a faithful 

 Achates at the side of comparative grammar. The infatuation of the 

 first days had died out some time before. The public, satiated with 

 the East by the Romantic School, found no further charm in it; 

 the successors of Wilkins and Jones pursued their laborious task 

 without exciting attention. But Sanskrit still remained, by well- 

 established right, the corner-stone of linguistic studies; perpetuated 

 without alteration for tens of centuries, it surpassed in purity all the 

 languages of the family. Moreover, the Hindu grammarians had been 

 the real creators of comparative grammar; it was in their school 



