110 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES 



with these documents, and, behold, new discoveries are already an- 

 nounced, due to the Griinwedel and Huth mission. This time we 

 have to do not with fragments of manuscript, but a text printed on 

 wood in the Tibetan manner. The work is in Sanskrit, with a marg- 

 inal title in Chinese, and belongs to the Buddhist Scriptures. What 

 splendid discoveries are we not justified in hoping for, now, if the 

 convents of Central Asia have multiplied copies of the sacred canon, 

 of the Sanskrit Tripitaka, in print! 



Thus, a century after its birth, Sanskrit philology sees its field extend 

 to the limits of man's horizon. By its origin, by its grammar, by its 

 vocabulary, by its earliest monuments, Sanskrit belongs to the Aryan 

 group, extending from the mouths of the Ganges to the shores of the 

 Atlantic. By Alexander's expedition and the creation of new king- 

 doms to the northwest of India, Indian and Hellenic destinies were 

 linked together for three or four hundred years. By the expansion 

 of Buddhism India dominated the politics, the thought, and the art 

 of the Far East. The childish pride of the Brahmans had thought 

 to exalt the dignity of the sacred language by presuming to confine 

 it, like a secret treasure, within the impassable boundaries of India. 

 Science has once more broken down superstition and revealed a truth 

 grander than falsehood. No more than any other nation of the w r orld 

 has India created or developed her civilization alone. Our civilizations , 

 by whatever particular name we choose to call them, are the collective 

 work of humanity. Far from developing in shy isolation, they are 

 only of worth when they borrow largely. The market of thought, 

 like the business market, is a continual movement of exchange. On 

 whatever point of the globe we may live, we are all legitimate heirs 

 of all the past of humanity; the richest are those who claim most of 

 that past. Whether applied to India or other regions, historical 

 studies have grandeur and beauty in so far as they increase the 

 patrimony of man; they awake in the individual the conscience of 

 the species; they reveal to us our double debt towards the past 

 which has formed us, towards the future which we are forming. 

 Thus they raise the labors of scholarship above a vain dilettantism; 

 by them her r61e is carried even into practical life, unjustly disdained, 

 and they show her toiling patiently and consciously for harmony 

 and progress. 



