RECENT PROGRESS OF SANSKRIT STUDIES. 281 



other sets of aphorisms, in which the results of older works and traditions are 

 reduced into a condensed and more scientific form. These aphorisms, in their 

 turn, have supplied the materials for the formation of such later works as the 

 ceremonial and legal institutes of Manu, Yajnavalkya, &c. The department of 

 grammar is now represented by a very large literature. This science has been 

 carefully studied in India from an early period. The famous grammarian 

 Panini, the oldest whose complete works have come down to us, is considered to 

 have lived several centuries before the Christian era ;* but he alludes to various 

 authors, and even to two schools of grammarians, as having preceded him. 

 Yaska, too, the interpreter of the Veda, who is regarded as older than Panini, 

 refers by name to numerous grammarians and etymologists who lived before his 

 time. The eight books of Panini contain, in the form of short aphorisms, a com- 

 plete grammatical system, founded no doubt on the labours of his predecessors, 

 as well as on his own observations. The aphorisms are not only brief, but very 

 technical. For instance, the various affixes by which the formation of derivatives 

 and the inflection of words and roots are effected, are denoted by letters which, 

 being rather algebraical symbols than distinct representations of the changes 

 which their application is intended to produce, could not be understood without 

 accompanying explanations. These aphorisms have become the subject of minute 

 annotation by two very ancient authors, Katyayana and Patanjali (whose Maha- 

 bhashya is an elaborate work of great extent), and by others ; and have also 

 formed the basis of numerous grammars in which the materials have been differ- 

 rently arranged, as well as the occasion of other treatises devoted to the discussion 

 of particular topics. The Prakrit (or mediaeval vernacular) languages have also 

 been treated in different grammatical works, which contain the rules according to 

 which these different dialects modify the words and inflections of the Sanskrit. 



It is now time that I should say something of the remarkable religious revo- 

 lution of which India had in the meantime become the theatre. 'Sakya Muni, or 

 Gautama Buddha, the author of this great movement, belonged to the warrior 

 caste, and was the son of an Indian prince. Being of a thoughtful and medi- 

 tative turn of mind, he abandoned his father's court, betook himself to a reli- 

 gious life, and studied under the most famous Brahmanical teachers of his day. 

 j He was not, however, satisfied with their doctrines. Though he held fast by 

 ' the old Indian tenet of the transmigration of souls, he founded on it a new 

 superstructure of his own, in many respects different from that of the Brah- 

 mans. The substance of the new system was, that by the attainment of tran- 

 scendental knowledge, and by the enlightened practice of moral virtues, men 

 .could be delivered from the miseries of renewed mundane existence, and enter 

 into the condition of nirvana. This doctrine he preached to people of all 

 classes without distinction, and in the vernacular tongue. In both of these 



* See Professor Muller's Anc. Sansk. Lit., pp. 304, ff. ; Professor Goldstucker's "Panini, his 

 place in Sanskrit Literature." 



VOL. XXIII. PART II. 4 H 



