Like most other tongues, it falls into dialects; just like the ancient Greek. Like the Doric, Æolic, and Ionic, these dialects were spoken over distant countries, and cultivated at different periods. Like them, too, each is characterized by its peculiar literature.
The Sanskrit itself, in its oldest form, is the Vedaic dialect of the religious hymns called Vedas—of great, but of exaggerated, antiquity.
Another form of equal antiquity is the language[151] of the Persepolitan and other arrow-headed inscriptions. These are of a known antiquity, and range from the time of Cambyses to that of Artaxerxes.
By old is meant old in structure, i.e., betraying by its archaic forms, an early stage of development. It is by no means old in chronology. In the way of chronology, the English of Shakespeare is older than the German of Goethe; yet the German of Goethe is the older tongue, because it retains more old inflections.
The third form is called Pali. In this is written the oldest Indian inscription; one containing the name of Antiochus, one of Alexander's successors. It is also the dialect of the chief Buddhist works.
A fourth form is the Bactrian. This occurs in the coins of Macedonian and other Indianized kings of Bactria, and is best studied in the "Ariana Antiqua," of Wilson.
A fifth is the Zend of the Zendavesta, the Scriptures of the followers of Zoroaster.
Others are called Pracrit. Some of the Sanskrit works are dramatic. In the modern comedies of Italy we find certain characters speaking the provincial dialects of Naples, Bologna, and other districts. The same took place here. In the Sanskrit plays we find deflexions from the standard language, put into the mouths of some of[152] the subordinate characters. It is believed that these Pracrits represented certain local dialects, as opposed to the purer and more classical Sanskrit.
Every spoken dialect of Hindostan has a per-centage of Sanskrit words in it; just as every dialect of England has an amount of Anglo-Norman. What does this prove? That depends upon the per-centage; and this differs in different languages. In a general way it may be stated that, amongst the tongues already enumerated, it is smallest in the isolated Tamulian tongues; larger in the Tamul of the Dekhan; and largest in the tongues about to be enumerated; these being the chief languages of modern Hindostan.
1. The Marathi of the Mahrattas. Here the Sanskrit words amount to four-fifths in the Marathi dictionaries.