1864] 



Proceedings oftlie Asiatic Society. 



473 



sible to refuse to admit that the Sanskrit language is of most remote 

 origin — so remote, that with our present imperfect means of research, 

 we find ourselves entirely at fault, if we attempt to elucidate its early 

 history ; but though it is impossible to discover a new language like 

 the Sanskrit, bearing in mind what has taken place, and looking to 

 the rapid strides that within the last two or three years have been 

 made in researches in the Zend language of the ancient books of the 

 Parsees, and the arrow-headed Inscriptions in that language, we 

 must not put out of mind the possibility of our one day being in a 

 position to ask, " If all the modern dialects of India are based on 

 the Sanskrit language, on what language is the Sanskrit itself 

 based ?" JSTor in making this remark do I wish to cut anything off 

 the age of the Sanskrit. At present, the language is altogether pre- 

 historic, and may possibly remain so for ever. We cannot be blind to 

 the fact, that speaking chronologically, we are first brought in contact 

 with it not at the beginning but at the end of a period. The first date 

 which we can grapple with anything like chronological precision, is 

 that of Sakya Muni, and his era records,' — not the dawn of a civiliza- 

 tion such as we meet with in tracing the early history of many other 

 nations we now call ancient, but a revolution and the overthrow of a 

 religion, and a system which had existed certainly for very many 

 centuries before, and in which he was not the first reformer. That 

 the Yedas are long anterior to the period of Sakya Muni, his existence 

 is sufficient proof. But beyond this isolated fact, besides the internal 

 evidence furnished us by the Yedas themselves, we have little to 

 guide us. The exact spot from whence the Aryans came is doubtful ; 

 when they entered India we cannot even conjecture ; but if by the 

 raMisJiases, daityas &c. spoken of in the Mahabharat, (which no doubt 

 contains the history of a period much anterior to that of its composi- 

 tion,) and represented by the learned lecturer as being driven to take 

 refuge in the rocks and caves of the hill fastnesses, and in a great 

 measure exterminated, as have been the red Indians in North Ame- 

 rica, are to be understood the aborigines of India, it appears to me that 

 we shall have some difficulty in placing that remnant of the other 

 colony which now inhabits the southern half of the Peninsula and 

 whose languages, the Tamil and Telinga, proclaim them to be of 

 Scythian origin. It is generally admitted that these people reached 

 India by the same route as the Aryan colony, and how they could 



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