V. A. Smith — Grrpco-Rnman influence 



[No. a 



system of Hindi logic, and the marvellous, almost miraculous, structure 

 of grammar erected by Panini and his successors have the greatest 

 appearance of absolute originality. Yet some competent scholars are 

 disposed to seek a western origin even for these. The true position of 

 the Sanskrit logicians and grammarians in relation to the teachers of 

 other countries cannot be satisfactorily determined until the main out- 

 lines of the chronology of Sanskrit literature are settled definitely within 

 narrow limits of possible error. The radius of error is gradually being 

 reduced, but a long time must elapse before it is brought within an 

 approximation of zero. 



In one branch of Indian science the operation of direct and potent 

 Greek influence, however it may once have been donbtod, has been fully 

 demonstrated, and is now admitted by all writers competent to form an 

 opinion on the subject. Indian astronomy, in its exactor form, as 

 taught in the Sanskrit text-books is essentially the astronomy of the 

 Alexandrian schools, and its technical nomenclature is to a large extent 

 Greek in a slight disguise. An earlier, inexact astronomy, probably of 

 Babylonian origin, had been known in India long before the works of 

 Alexandrian professors reached her shores, but all Indian astronomy 

 with any claim to scientific precision is Greek. This scientific astronomy 

 was taught by A'ryabhata in A. D. 500, and by Varaha Mihira about 

 half a century later, but it was probably known to some persons in 

 india at a considerable earlier date.* 



It is obvious that highly abstruse and technical works like the 

 treatises of the Alexandrian astronomers could not have been mastered 

 by the Indian astronomers except by textual study at a time when the 

 Greek language was still intelligible to learned men in India. The 

 extensive importation of Greek technical terms into the vocabulary of 

 Hindu astronomy shows that the Greek works themselves tnnst have 

 been read in India, and also proves that the ideas expressed by those 

 terms were unfamiliar to the native scholars. If the ideas had been 

 familiar, Sanskrit words to express them would have existed, and, it- 

 such words had existed, they would have been used, and the foreign 

 terms would not have been imported. The necessity under which the 

 Hindu astronomers lay of borrowing Greek scientific terms by the score 



* Pandit Shankar Balkriskna Dikskit observes that there are two distinct and 

 separate astronomical works, each hearing the name of Aryabhata as its author. 

 The first (to which reference is made in the text), known as A'njabhntjijd, or A'rt/a 

 S'uldhdnla, bears the date S'aka-satrsvat 421 expired, = A. D. 499-500. It has been 

 published by Dr. Kern. The second work, known as the Itaghu-grya-Siildhdnta, 

 was composed at some time between A. D. 628 and 1150, and appears never to have 

 been printed. These two distinct works are said to have been sometimes confound- 

 ed by European writers, (Indian Anliqiumi, Vol. XVII (Nov. 1888), p. 312). 



