1863. | Note on the Taxila Inscription. 157 
the Sanskrita for my guide. As far as I am able to judge from the 
meagre evidence at my command, the grammar of the Arian inscrip- 
tions is unquestionably of Sanskrita origin. Its declensions correspond 
with the Pali of the Cinghalese on the one hand and the Sanskrita on 
the other, and closely resemble the Pali of the As/oka records, of which 
most probably itis a dialectic variety. Like the Pali of As/oka, it 
has no case-aflix for the nominative. The accusative in either is 
formed by an m or the omission of all case-mark just as we find it in 
thelater Prakrita. In the modern Indian yernaculars of Sanskrita 
origin it is frequently omitted. The instrumental has ena both in the 
As‘oka Pali and the Arian. In the Prakrita it changes into hinto. 
For the dative we have in both the dialects the same affix e or ye. 
The ablative has not yet been met with in the Arian. The genitive 
sa for the Sanskrita sya is common to the Arian, the Pali, and the 
Prakrita, while the e of the Sanskrita locative is almost universal in 
the Arian vernaculars of India both ancient and modern. In As’‘oka’s 
Kapur di Giri monument it is represented by sz, and in the Pali and 
the Prakrita by mhz. 
Only a limited number of conjugational affixes have as yet been 
discovered in the Bactrian inscriptions, but they all assimilate to the 
Sanskrita more closely than to the Pali of the Cinghalese. The ¢2 in 
paridharatt and viharati of the Taxila and the Rawal Pindi records 
and the fw in bhavatu of the Wardak vase, are so identically Sanskrita, 
that if we had no other evidence to ascertain the relationship of the 
Bactro-Pali to the ancient classics of India, they would have sutfticed 
to settle it with unquestionable certainty. Dr. Max Miller, talking 
of the English, says, “The single s, used as the exponent of the third 
person singular of the indicative present, is irrefragable evidence 
that in a scientific classification of languages, English, though it did 
not retain a single word of Saxon origin, would have to be classed 
as Saxon, and as a branch of the great Teutonic stem of the Arian 
family of speech.” And if this argument in favour of grammar being 
the only criterion of the relationship and classification of languages 
be true, how strongly must it apply to the Bactro-Pali which, besides 
its grammar, has nearly the whole stock ofits vocables taken from the 
Sanskrita? I say “nearly” to provide against the possibility of an 
erratic foreign element occasionally turning up, but as far as my 
knowledge of those records which have been already translated, is 
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