RECENT PROGRESS OF SANSKRIT STUDIES. 259 



who first pointed out the importance cf a careful study of the Vedas for a correct 

 insight into the early history of the Hindus, and by his translation of the first 

 portion of the hymns prepared the way for the subsequent researches by which 

 his countrymen Roth, Benfey, Muller, and Aufrecht, have begun to elucidate 

 the true meaning and significance of those ancient records.* 



It is with the Vedas that the most eminent foreign scholars have of late years 

 chiefly occupied themselves; and there is no. doubt that they have acted wisely 

 in giving this direction to their researches, as a knowledge of these ancient works 

 is indispensable to the right comprehension of all the later developments of the 

 Hindu mythology and institutions. 



Having thus briefly noticed the earlier stage of Sanskrit studies, I shall now 

 give some account of their more recent advances. 



As it is mainly from an examination of the Sanskrit language, when compared 

 with the classical tongues of the West, that we are able to form any conception 

 of the earliest history of the Hindus, I shall first say something of the language. 

 It is thus characterised by Sir W. Jones, in words which have been often re- 

 peated : — 



" The Sanskrit language," he says, " whatever may be its antiquity, is of a 

 wonderful structure ; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, 

 and more exquisitely refined than either ; yet bearing to both of them a stronger 

 affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could 

 have been produced by accident ; so strong that no philologer could examine all 

 the three without believing them to be sprung from one common source, which 

 perhaps no longer exists." 



We need not inquire whether or not the Sanskrit is really, as Sir W. Jones 

 affirms, " more perfect than the Greek." But his assertion that the former lan- 

 guage possesses a strong affinity, both in roots and forms of grammar, to the 

 Greek and Latin, is one which has been fully verified, and rendered more positive, 

 by later researches. The investigations of Professor Bopp and his school have now 

 shown that the affinity extends to a large number of roots and forms of inflexion, 

 between which no mutual relationship had been at first suspected to exist. By 

 tracing the different steps by which words have, in the long course of ages, been 

 gradually modified, and by pointing out the laws according to which certain 

 letters vary in these three languages respectively {i.e., how, in some cases, a par- 

 ticular letter in Sanskrit is always or commonly represented by such another 

 letter in Greek, and by such a third letter in Latin), these scholars have been 

 able to establish the affinity of numerous words, the connection of which had 

 been previously obscured by their apparent dissimilarity. And not only has it 



* See the Notice of his Life prefixed to his edition, and Latin translation, of the first book 

 of the Rigveda. London, 1838. 



