108 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES 



seemed to lie in slight shades of correctness or purity; when the 

 distance widened, the priestly caste remained faithfully attached to 

 the privileged language that separated it from the illiterate masses; 

 it consecrated its own language to religion and imposed it on the 

 orthodox literature. Imagine the Latin of Cicero rescued by the 

 Christian Church, and, under her patronage, accepted as the language 

 of literature by all the peoples of Europe, irrespective of spoken 

 tongues, and you will understand the rdle of the Sanskrit language 

 and literature in India. 



The Brahmans had intended to keep the monopoly of Sanskrit; 

 they nattered themselves that they shared it with the gods alone. 

 But two rebellious churches rose up against Brahman pretensions 

 and marked the hour of their triumph by the conquest of Sanskrit. 

 Cultivated by the Buddhists and Jains, the mass, already huge, of 

 Sanskrit literature spread and multiplied in spite of the Brahmans. 

 But Jainism, after a short time of prosperity, sank into a long torpor 

 and was forgotten. Buddhism, receiving a mortal blow by the invasion 

 of Islam, which burnt the convents and massacred or dispersed the 

 communities, disappeared from Hindu soil. The Brahman had his 

 revenge; he wreaked his jealous hatred on the remains of the rival 

 who had disputed empire with him; he thought to efface the last 

 traces of Buddhism, and preserved the mere name only to execrate 

 it. But again Western science baffled his calculations. 



In 1816, by the force of British arms, a British resident, assisted 

 by two subordinates, was established at Nepal among the refractory 

 Gurkhas. Ten years later Hodgson with toilsome perseverance ex- 

 tracted the still immense ruins of Buddhist Sanskrit literature from 

 the libraries of Nepal. At about the same time Ceylon, Burma, 

 and Siam, which had remained faithful to the Law of the Buddha, 

 yielded up to investigators a still more considerable collection of 

 works both religious and profane, written in Pali, an ancient dialect, 

 near to Sanskrit and sprung from the same soil, but independent. 



Sanskrit texts and Pali texts, coming from opposite points of the 

 Indian horizon, brought with them, each one, a body of tradition and 

 legend on the life of the Buddha and the destinies of the church. 

 By means of strictly critical comparison it was possible to extract their 

 part of history from these stories. Burnouf, the successor of Che"zy 

 at the College de France, undertook this heavy task, undaunted 

 by the multitude of manuscripts and the variety of languages; by 

 dint of sagacity, penetration, justice, and reason he accomplished at 

 the outset a definitive work. His Introduction to the History of Indian 

 Buddhism remains at the end of half a century of new discoveries 

 and researches an authority still safe and still consulted. 



With Buddhism Sanskrit finally overstepped the frontiers of 

 India. The bold enterprise of Csoma de Koros, who had shut himself 



