'Burnouf's opinion on the origin of the Gâthâs, we venture to think, is founded on a mistaken estimate of Sanskrit style. The poetry of the Gâthâ has much artistic elegance which at once indicates that it is not the composition of men who were ignorant of the first principles of grammar. The 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 Sanskrit logic, who have expressed the most abstruse metaphysical ideas in precise and often in beautiful language, who composed with ease and elegance in Ârya, Totaka, and other difficult measures, were unacquainted with the rudiments of the language in which they wrote, and were unable to conjugate the verb to be in all its forms.... The more reasonable conjecture appears to be that the Gâthâ is the production of bards who were contemporaries or immediate successors of Sâkya, who recounted to the devout congregations of the prophet of Magadha, the sayings and doings of their great teacher in popular and easy-flowing verses, which in course of time came to be regarded as the most authentic source of all information connected with the founder of Buddhism. The high estimation in which the ballads and improvisations of bards are held in India and particularly in the Buddhist writings, favours this supposition; and the circumstance that the poetical portions are generally introduced in corroboration of the narration of the prose, with the words "Thereof this may be said," affords a strong presumptive evidence.'
Now this, from the pen of a native scholar, is truly remarkable. The spirit of Niebuhr seems to have reached the shores of India, and this ballad theory comes out more successfully in the history of Buddha than in the history of Romulus. The absence of anything like cant in the mouth of a Brahman speaking of Buddhism, the bête noire of all orthodox Brahmans, is highly satisfactory, and our Sanskrit scholars in Europe will have to pull hard if, with such men as Babu Rajendralal in the field, they are not to be distanced in the race of scholarship.
We believe, then, that Babu Rajendralal is right, and we look upon the dialect of the Gâthâs as a specimen of the Sanskrit spoken by the followers of Buddha about the time of Asoka and later. And this will help us to understand some of the peculiar changes which the Sanskrit of the Chinese Buddhists must have undergone, even before it was disguised in the strange dress of the Chinese alphabet. The Chinese pilgrims did not hear the Sanskrit pronounced as it was pronounced in the Parishads according to the strict rules of their Sikshâ or phonetics. They heard it as it was spoken in Buddhist monasteries, as it was sung in the Gâthâs of Buddhist minstrels, as it was preached in the Vyâkaranas or sermons of Buddhist friars. For instance. In the Gâthâs a short a is frequently lengthened. We find nâ instead of na, 'no.' The same occurs in the Sanskrit of the Chinese Buddhists. (See Julien, 'Méthode,' p. 18; p. 21.) We find there also vistâra instead of vistara, &c. In the dialect of the Gâthâs nouns ending in consonants, and therefore irregular, are transferred to the easier declension in a. The same process takes place in modern Greek and in the transition of Latin into Italian; it is, in fact, a general tendency of all languages which are carried on by the stream of living speech. Now this transition from one declension to another had taken place before the Chinese had appropriated the Sanskrit of the Buddhist books. The Sanskrit nabhas becomes nabha in the Gâthâs; locative nabhe, instead of nabhasi. If, therefore, we find in Chinese lo-che for the Sanskrit ragas, dust, we may ascribe the change of r into l to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce or to write an r. We may admit that the Chinese alphabet offered nothing nearer to the sound of ga than tche; but the dropping of the final s has no excuse in Chinese, and finds its real explanation in the nature of the Gâthâ dialect. Thus the Chinese Fan-lan-mo does not represent the correct Sanskrit Brahman, but the vulgar form Brahma. The Chinese so-po for sarva, all, thomo for dharma, law, find no explanation in the dialect of the Gâthâs, but the suppression of the r before v and m, is of frequent occurrence in the inscriptions of Asoka. The omission of the initial s in words like sthâna, place, sthavira, an elder, is likewise founded on the rules of Pâli and Prâkrit, and need not be placed to the account of the Chinese translators. In the inscription of Girnar sthavira is even reduced to thaira. The s of the nominative is frequently dropped in the dialect of the Gâthâs, or changed into o. Hence we might venture to doubt whether it is necessary to give to the character 1780 of M. Julien's list, which generally has the value of ta, a second value sta. This s is only wanted to supply the final s of kas, the interrogative pronoun, in such a sentence as kas tadgunah? what is the use of this? Now here we are inclined to believe that the final s of kas had long disappeared in the popular language of India, before the Chinese came to listen to the strange sounds and doctrines of the disciples of Buddha. They probably heard ka tadguna, or ka tagguna, and this they represented as best they could by the Chinese kia-to-kieou-na.
With these few suggestions we leave the work of M. Stanislas Julien. It is in reality a work done once for all—one huge stone and stumbling-block effectually rolled away which for years had barred the approach to some most valuable documents of the history of the East. Now that the way is clear, let us hope that others will follow, and that we shall soon have complete and correct translations of the travels of Fahian and other Buddhist pilgrims whose works are like so many Murray's 'Handbooks of India,' giving us an insight into the social, political, and religious state of that country at a time when we look in vain for any other historical documents.
March, 1861.
FOOTNOTES:
[91] 'Méthode pour déchiffrer et transcrire les noms sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois.' Par M. Stanislas Julien, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1861.