116 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES 



can bring to bear, and the careful comparison of analogous phases of 

 ascertainable duration in other dead languages, can hardly fail to 

 lead to much greater certainty than is at present attainable. 



A further problem presented by the Vedic language is the true 

 principle to be followed in interpreting the meanings of words 

 which are either exclusively Vedic or seem to have a different sense 

 from that which they bear in Classical Sanskrit. All scholars are 

 agreed that interpretation based exclusively on comparative philology 

 on the one hand, or native commentators on the other, cannot lead 

 to satisfactory results. At the same time there is a school of Sanskrit- 

 ists who tend to bring down the Vedas, as being exclusively Indian 

 literary products, linguistically too close to the Classical Sanskrit 

 period, and to color their interpretation too strongly with the thought 

 of that period. To speak of a work as purely Indian does not neces- 

 sarily take us much beyond fixing the geographical limits of its 

 origin. Beowulf is a purely English poem, but I doubt whether more 

 light is not shed on its language and thought by the Old Saxon 

 literature of the Continent than by the English literature of the age 

 of Tennyson. The principle advocated by Professor Oldenberg of 

 admitting every form of evidence, even extra-Indian, which is cap- 

 able of throwing light on the interpretation of the Vedas, appears to 

 me to be the correct one. What is at present wanted is defmiteness 

 in laying down the limitations which shpuld be imposed on the two 

 divergent methods I have indicated. 



A branch of this problem is the true relation of Vedic myths 

 to the forms which they present in post- Vedic literature. Some 

 scholars hold that the latter shed much light on the interpretation 

 of the former; others that they add nothing to our knowledge of the 

 former, and are sometimes even based on a mi^mderstanding of 

 them. I cannot help thinking that the efforts which have hitherto 

 been made to illuminate obscure Vedic legends from the material of 

 the later period have not proved at all fruitful. Judgment should, 

 however, be suspended on the question as a whole, till all the avail- 

 able material has been examined in its historical connection. 



We already know pretty clearly, in a general way, the various 

 phases through which the ancient language of India, by the gradual 

 loss of grammatical forms, a process of decay rather than of 

 growth, finally arrived at the stage stereotyped by the grammar 

 of Panini about 300 B. c. These phases have, however, yet to be 

 treated in greater detail and to be separated with greater definiteness 

 than has hitherto been done. It is intended that this task should be 

 accomplished in forthcoming contributions to Biihler and Kielhorn's 

 Encyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research, dealing with the language of 

 the Vedas (by myself), and with that of the later period beginning 

 with the Brahmanas (by Professor Luders). 



