Meantime, during all these centuries, Sanskrit continued to be preserved as the classic tongue and literary vehicle of Brahmanic thought and study, and we are told on good authority that, “even at the present day, an educated Brahman would write with greater fluency in Sanskrit than in Bengálée.” It is now well established that Sanskrit is certainly not the parent, but the eldest brother or chef de famille of the large groups of Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian families from which all the modern European tongues (Basque excepted) are derived (we omit mention of the Oriental branches). When we write the Sanskrit words mader, pader, dokhter, sunu, bruder, mand, lib, nasa, vidhuva, stara, we very nearly write the corresponding English terms, and see in them their English descendants through Mœso-Gothic and German. The Sanskrit and Greek equivalents of I am, thou art, he is, are almost identical:
Sanskrit: asmi, asi, asti.
Greek: esmi, eis, esti.
We find the Sanskrit dinâra in the Latin denarius; ayas in Sanskrit—passing through the Gothic ais to English iron; and plava, in Sanskrit, a ship appearing in the Greek ploion (ship), Slavonic ploug, and English plough; for the Aryans said the ship ploughed the sea, and the plough sailed across the field. In like manner, similar illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely to the extent of volumes, showing not hazardous and doubtful etymological similarities, but clear, distinct, and sharp-cut affinities by clearly traceable descent.
“Who was the first European that knew of Sanskrit, or that acquired a knowledge of Sanskrit, is difficult to say,” remarks Prof. Max Müller. Very true. But it is not at all difficult to reach the certainty that that European, whatever might have been his name, was a Catholic missionary.
Soon after S. Francis Xavier began to preach the Gospel in India (1542), we hear of our missionaries acquiring not only the current dialects of the country, but also the classical Sanskrit language; of their successfully studying the theological and philosophical literature of the exclusive priestly class; and of their challenging the Brahmans to public disputations. If the example of their labors, humility, sufferings, and piety were not sufficient to win souls, they always, where it was needed, had science at their command, and were at once scholars, linguists, mathematicians, and astronomers as well as lowly messengers of the glad tidings of salvation.
Prominent among the most remarkable of these men stands
Robert De' Nobili.
A nephew of Cardinal de' Nobili and a relative of Pope Julius the Third and of the great Bellarmine, he was nobly born and tenderly reared. He went a missionary to the Indies in 1603, and began his public labors at Madura in 1606. [pg 327] Being a man of superior education, cultivation, and refinement, he soon perceived the reasons which kept all the natives of high caste—especially the Brahmans—from joining the communities of Christian converts formed by the common people of the country. He saw that the Brahmans could be successfully met and argued with only by a Brahman, and he at once resolved on the heroic project of fitting himself by long study and almost incredible labor to become a Brahman in outward appearance, language, and accomplishments, and thus obtain access to the noblest, most learned, and most accomplished men in India. The task was full of difficulty. For years he devoted himself to his silent work, acquiring in secret the dialects of Tamil and Telugu, and the language and literature of Sanskrit and the Vedas. When in time he felt himself strong enough in Brahmanic learning and accomplishments to meet them in argument and debate, he publicly appeared arrayed in their costume, wearing the cord, bearing the exclusive frontal mark, and submitting to the rigid observance of their diet (eating nothing but rice and vegetables) and their complicated requirements of caste. So exhaustive had been his studies, so thorough was his preparation, and so admirable his talent, that his success was perfect. The Brahmans whom he met found in him their master even in their own exclusive field of literature, philosophy, and religion. Müllbauer (Geschichte der katholischen Missionen Ostindiens) says they were afraid of him. As a devoted and successful missionary, his life is full of interest; but we have to do with him here only as the first known European Sanskrit scholar. After forty-two years of missionary labor in that exhausting climate, worn out, infirm, and blind, Robert de' Nobili died, aged eighty years, at Melapour, on the coast of Coromandel. The distinguished Professor of Sanskrit at the English university of Oxford, Max Müller, pays the following earnest tribute to the acquirements of this admirable missionary and scholar:
“A man who could quote from Manu, from the Purânas, and even from such works as the Apastamba-sûtras, which are known even at present to only those few Sanskrit scholars who can read Sanskrit MSS., must have been far advanced in a knowledge of the sacred language and literature of the Brahmans; and the very idea that he came, as he said, to preach a new or a fourth Veda, which had been lost, shows how well he knew the strong and weak points of the theological system which he came to conquer.”