The Triumph Of Sanskrit.
Through the publications of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, European scholars were now furnished with facilities for the study of Sanskrit, and it would be difficult to say which of the two, the language or the literature, excited the deeper or more lasting interest.
The absolute identity of grammatical forms of Greek and Latin with Sanskrit was at once recognized, and it was evident that these three languages sprang from one common source. The revelation created one of the greatest literary sensations ever known in Europe. The theory that upheld Hebrew as the mother tongue—already seriously damaged—now received its death-blow. Classical scholars shook their heads sceptically. Theologians were troubled. Ethnographers were all at sea. Etymologists and lexicographers were dumfounded. The philosophers of the day, each one of whom had his own little system of the universe to take care of, saw their theories ruthlessly upset; and Lord Monboddo, who had just finished his great work in which he derives mankind from a couple of apes, and all the dialects of the world from the language of the Egyptian gods, was petrified with astonishment. His Egyptian theory, his men with tails, and his monkeys without tails, were all equally doomed to destruction. To his credit, though, it must be said that he soon afterward accepted the situation with commendable intelligence and alacrity.
Other pet theories and other deeply ingrained prejudices of many scholars of the best education were shocked and scandalized at the claims set up for Sanskrit. The idea that the classical languages of Greece and Rome could be intimately related to a jargon of mere savages—as they supposed the natives of India to be—was to the last degree repugnant to these gentlemen, and they went great lengths in assertion, absurd argument, irony, and ridicule, to escape the, alas! too inevitable and horribly unpleasant conclusion that Greek and Latin were of the same linguistic kith and kin as the language of the black inhabitants of India. The distinguished Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, by way of protest against the claims set up for Sanskrit, even went so far as to deny that any such language existed or ever had existed, and wrote his famous essay to prove that those arch forgers and liars, the Brahmans, had manufactured the dialect on the model of the Greek and the Latin, and that the whole thing, language, literature, and all, was a piece of daring invention and bold imposture.
How deeply rooted were the prejudices, and how stubborn the ignorance, even among scholars and men of literary pursuits, in favor of the Hebrew and against the reception of Sanskrit in its place, may be judged from the representative fact, that [pg 332] so late as the ninth day of August, 1832, we find no less a man than Coleridge making this entry in his note-book: “The claims of the Sanskrit for priority to the Hebrew as a language are ridiculous.”
The first European scholar of distinction who dared boldly accept the facts and conclusions of Sanskrit scholarship was Frederick von Schlegel. He began his study of the language with verbal tuition from Sir Alexander Hamilton, continued it at Paris with the aid of M. Langles, custodian of Oriental MSS. in the Imperial Library at Paris, and subsequently had the advantage of the rich collection in the British Museum. The result was his Language and Wisdom of the Indians, published in 1808. It embraced in one glance the languages of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany, riveted them together by the name of Indo-Germanic (by common consent of scholars since changed to Indo-European), and became the foundation of the science of language. Appearing only two years after the publication of the first volume of Adelung's Mithridates, “it is separated from that work,” says Prof. Müller, “by the same distance which separates the Copernican from the Ptolemæan system,” and this work of Schlegel, he adds, “has truly been called the discovery of a new world.”
Omitting mention of the labors of many distinguished French and German laborers in the same field, we may close our record of the services rendered by Catholic scholars to the cause of Sanskrit literature by reference to the remarkable course of lectures on “Science and Revealed Religion,” delivered by the Reverend (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman, at Rome, in 1835,[143] only two years and six months after the memorable entry of Coleridge in his note-book.
Sanskrit Literature And The Vedas.
It was perfectly natural that the fresh enthusiasm of the earliest Sanskrit scholars should have carried them into what is now looked upon as an undue estimate and hyperbolic praise of their new discovery and acquisition. And this early enthusiasm was neither short in duration nor limited in extent.
A tidal wave of admiration swept over European scholarship with the appearance of Sacontala, or The Fatal Ring (Calcutta, 1789), certainly a beautiful specimen of dramatic art and admirable poetry by Kalidasa, the Indian Shakespeare, who is assigned to the period of Vikrama the Great (b.c. 56). Sir William Jones very judiciously selected this masterpiece of Indian literature for translation as a first specimen, and, although in prose, it so delighted a French scholar, Chézy, that it induced him first to learn Sanskrit and then to publish a French version of it. This was followed by no less than four German translations, prose and verse, a Danish translation, and an additional English translation (the best) in a mingling of verse and prose (following the original) by Monier Williams. Goethe was enraptured with the Sacontala, and it drew from him the celebrated verse: