The Hebrew language was, from the earliest period of Christianity, settled upon by almost common consent of the learned as the primitive tongue. It was generally admitted by scholars that the sole great and essential linguistic problem to be solved was this:
“As Hebrew is undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how are we to explain the process by which Hebrew became split into so many dialects, and how can these numerous dialects, such as Greek and Latin, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, be traced back to their common source, the Hebrew?”
Upon this hopelessly insoluble problem an amazing amount of remarkable ingenuity and solid erudition were, for hundreds of years, [pg 325] hopelessly wasted, for, at this day, instead of Hebrew, Sanskrit is recognized as being the oldest of all known languages. How came this about? Reply to this inquiry will at the same time answer the questions proposed at the outset of this article.
The result of labor on the problem, “How could all languages be traced back to the Hebrew?” was of course unsatisfactory. No solution could be obtained. None indeed was possible.
At last it was suggested, why should all languages be derived from the Hebrew? and with investigation thus taken off its false route, the question was in a fair way to be successfully treated. Leibnitz vigorously denied the claims set up for Hebrew, and said: “There is as much reason for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind, as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise.” More than this, he indicated the necessity of applying to language as well as to any other science the principle of a sound inductive process, and in this he was greatly aided by the Jesuit missionaries in China.
“It stands to reason,” he said, “that we ought to begin with studying the modern languages which are within our reach, in order to compare them with one another, to discover their differences and affinities, and then to proceed to those which have preceded them in former ages, in order to show their filiation and their origin, and then to ascend step by step to the most ancient tongues, the analysis of which must lead to the only trustworthy conclusions.”
But Leibnitz, while properly disputing the justice of the claims of Hebrew as the mother-tongue, knew of none other for which a similar claim might be advanced. It is doubtful if he ever heard of Sanskrit, although he lived until 1716, a full century after one, at least, of our missionaries had mastered Sanskrit and all the Vedas.
Sanskrit
is the ancient language of the Hindus, and had ceased to be a spoken language three centuries before the Christian era. The sacred Vedas, the oldest literary productions of the Hindus, and even the laws of Manu and the Purânas, later works, are written in a dialect still older than the Sanskrit, of which it is the parent, and are assigned by different scholars to periods varying from twelve hundred to two thousand years b.c. Thus, the dialects of Sanskrit spoken by the people of India three hundred years b.c. may be said to have been to the Vedic Sanskrit what Italian now is to the Latin. These dialects, modified by admixture with the languages of the various conquerors of India, the Arabic, Persian, Mongolic, and Turkish, and changed also by grammatical corruption, yet survive in the modern Hindí, Hindustání, Mahratta, and Bengálée.
Specimens of the dialects spoken by the people of the northern, eastern, and southwestern regions of India have come down to us in the inscriptions of the Buddhist King Piyadasi (third century b.c.), and in the account of the victory over Antiochus which King Asoka (206 b.c.) had graven on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri. These inscriptions have been deciphered by Burnouf, Norris, Wilson, and others, and are found to be in the Prakrit (common), not the Sanskrit (perfect) or exclusive dialect. From these facts the best Oriental scholars draw the conclusion that, at the periods of Piyadasi and Asoka, the Sanskrit, if spoken at all, was then [pg 326] already confined to the educated caste of Brahmans, having been a living language at some remote previous period (most probably between the VIIIth and IVth centuries b.c.), spoken by all classes of that race which emigrated from Central India into Asia, and the language so spoken is that to which modern Orientalists give the name of Aryan. For it will be borne in mind that the term Sanskrit is no indication of the people or race who originally spoke the language so called: it merely indicates the estimation in which it is held by their successors, and signifies “the perfect language.”