1553.—De Barros calls it Zingaçar in II. i. 4, and Sangaça in IV. i. 14.
1584.—"There is a Haven belonging to those ryvers (rovers), distant from Goa about 12 miles, and is called Sanguiseo, where many of those Rovers dwell, and doe so much mischiefe that no man can passe by, but they receive some wrong by them.... Which the Viceroy understanding, prepared an armie of 15 Foists, over which he made chiefe Captaine a Gentleman, his Nephew called Don Iulianes Mascharenhas, giving him expresse commandement first to goe unto the Haven of Sanguiseu, and utterly to raze the same downe to the ground."—Linschoten, ch. 92; [Hak. Soc. ii. 170].
1602.—"Both these projects he now began to put in execution, sending all his treasures (which they said exceeded ten millions in gold) to the river of Sanguicer, which was also within his jurisdiction, being a seaport, and there embarking it at his pleasure."—Couto, ix. 8. See also Dec. X. iv.:
"How D. Gileanes Mascarenhas arrived in Malabar, and how he entered the river of Sanguicer to chastise the Naique of that place; and of the disaster in which he met his death." (This is the event of 1584 related by Linschoten); also Dec. X. vi. 4: "Of the things that happened to D. Jeronymo Mascarenhas in Malabar, and how he had a meeting with the Zamorin, and swore peace with him; and how he brought destruction on the Naique of Sanguicer."
1727.—"There is an excellent Harbour for Shipping 8 Leagues to the Southward of Dabul, called Sanguseer, but the Country about being inhabited by Raparees, it is not frequented."—A. Hamilton, [ed. 1744] i. 244.
SANSKRIT, s. The name of the classical language of the Brahmans, Saṃskṛita, meaning in that language 'purified' or 'perfected.' This was obviously at first only an epithet, and it is not of very ancient use in this specific application. To the Brahmans Sanskrit was the bhāsha, or language, and had no particular name. The word Sanskrit is used by the protogrammarian Pāṇini (some centuries before Christ), but not as a denomination of the language. In the latter sense, however, both 'Sanskrit' and 'Prakrit' (Pracrit) are used in the Bṛihat Samhitā of Varāhamihira, c. A.D. 504, in a chapter on omens (lxxxvi. 3), to which Prof. Kern's translation does not extend. It occurs also in the Mṛichch'hakaṭikā, translated by Prof. H. H. Wilson in his Hindu Theatre, under the name of the 'Toy-cart'; in the works of Kumārila Bhatta, a writer of the 7th century; and in the Pāṇinīyā Śīkshā, a metrical treatise ascribed by the Hindus to Pāṇini, but really of comparatively modern origin.
There is a curiously early mention of Sanskrit by the Mahommedan poet Amīr Khusrū of Delhi, which is quoted below. The first mention (to our knowledge) of the word in any European writing is in an Italian letter of Sassetti's, addressed from Malabar to Bernardo Davanzati in Florence, and dating from 1586. The few words on the subject, of this writer, show much acumen.
In the 17th and 18th centuries such references to this language as occur are found chiefly in the works of travellers to Southern India, and by these it is often called Grandonic, or the like, from grantha, 'a book' (see [GRUNTH], [GRUNTHUM]) i.e. a book of the classical Indian literature. The term Sanskrit came into familiar use after the investigations into this language by the English in Bengal (viz. by Wilkins, Jones, &c.) in the last quarter of the 18th century. [See Macdonell, Hist. of Sanskrit Lit. ch. i.]
A.D. x?—"Maitreya. Now, to me, there are two things at which I cannot choose but laugh, a woman reading Sanskrit, and a man singing a song: the woman snuffles like a young cow when the rope is first passed through her nostrils; and the man wheezes like an old Pandit repeating his bead-roll."—The Toy-Cart, E.T. in Wilson's Works, xi. 60.
A.D. y?—"Three-and-sixty or four-and-sixty sounds are there originally in Prakrit ([PRACRIT]) even as in Sanskrit, as taught by the Svayambhū."—Pāṇinīyā Śīkshā, quoted in Weber's Ind. Studien (1858), iv. 348. But see also Weber's Akadem. Vorlesungen (1876), p. 194.