612 On the Peculiarities of the Odthd Dialect. [No. 6. 



melange in which incorrect Sanskrit bristles with forms of which 

 some are entirely Pali and others popular in the most general 

 sense of the term. There is no geographical name to bestow upon 

 a language of this kind ; but it is at the same time intelligible how 

 such a jargon may have been produced in places where the Sanskrita 

 was not studied systematically, and in the midst of populations 

 which had never spoken it or had known only the dialects derived 

 from branches more or less remote from the primitive stock. I 

 incline then to the belief that this part of the great Sutras must 

 have been written out of India, or, to express myself more precisely, 

 in countries situated on this (western) side of the Indus, or in 

 Cashmir, for example ; countries where the learned language of Brah- 

 manism and Buddhism would be cultivated with less success than 

 in Central India. It appears to me almost impossible that the 

 jargon of these poems, could have been produced in an epoch when 

 Buddhism flourished in Hindustan. There, in fact, the priests had 

 no other choice but between these two idioms ; either the Sanskrita, 

 i. e. the language which prevails in the compositions collected in 

 Nepal, or the Pali, that is the dialect which is found on the ancient 

 Buddhist inscriptions of India, and which has been adopted by the 

 Buddhists of Ceylon."* 



This opinion, we venture to think, is founded on a mistaken estimate 

 of Sanskrita style. The poetry of the Gratha has much artistic ele- 

 gance which at once indicates that it is not the composition of men, 

 who were ignorant of the first principles of grammar. Its authors 

 display a great deal of learning, and discuss the subtlest questions of 

 logic and metaphysics with much tact and ability, and it is difficult to 

 conceive that men who were perfectly familiar with the most intricate 

 forms of Sanskrita logic ; who have expressed the most abstruse 

 metaphysical ideas in precise and often in beautiful language ; who 

 composed with ease and elegance in Arya, Tofalca and other difficult 

 measures, were unacquainted with the rudiments of the language 

 in which they wrote, and even unable to conjugate the verb to be, 

 in all its forms. This difficulty is greatly enhanced, when we bear 

 in mind that the prose portion of the Vaipulya Sutras is written in 

 perfectly pure Sanskrita, and has no trace whatever of the pro- 

 vincialisms and popular forms so abundant in the poetry. If these 

 * VHistoire du Buddhisme Indien, p. 105. 



