The Sanskrit Language

445 Pages·2009·19.2 MB·English

PREFACE
The discovery of the Sanskrit language by European scholars
at the end of the eighteenth century was the starting point from
which developed the study of the comparative philology of the
Indo-European languages and eventually the whole science of
modern! linguistics. In spite of this there does not exist in
English :~ny book presenting a systematic account of Sanskrit
in its relation to the other Indo-European languages. One may
even go further and say that there is no work in any language
which adequately fulfils this purpose. Wackernagel's great
work, begun sixty years ago, still remains to be completed,
although, with the recent appearance of a further instalment,
its completion has been brought nearer. Thumb's Handbuch
des Sanskrit which was of service to manygenerations of students
is now very much dated, and always fell between the two
stools of trying to be an elementary text-book of Sanskrit and
a treatise on its comparative grammar at the same time.
On account of its antiquity and well-preserved structure
Sanskrit is of unique importance for the study of Indo-European,
and an up-to-date account of its comparative grammar is
necessary, not only to students of Sanskrit itself, but also to
those interested in any branch of Indo-European philology.
Consequently when I was asked to contribute a book on
Sanskrit to the series The Great Languages, it ¥Vas clear that by
concentrating on the study of Sanskrit from this point of view
the greatest need would be met. This is particularly true since
for the history of Indo-Aryan inside India, from Sanskrit down
to modern times, students already have at their disposal the
excellent work of Jules Bloch.
Providing a reliable account of Sanskrit in its relation to
Indo-European is at the present moment not altogether a simple
matter. Forty years ago there existed a generally agreed doc­
trine of Indo-European theory wpich had been systematically
presented in the early years of the century in Brugmann's
Grundriss. At that time it would merely have been a question
v
vi PREFACE
of adopting this corpus of agreed doctrine to the needs of the
student and general reader. and of the particular language
described. Since then theJiiscovery of Hittite has revolution­
ised Indo-European studies and a considerable part of the older
theory has been unable to stand up to the new evidence.
Consequently Indo-European studies can now be said to be in
a state of flux. New theories have appeared, and are clearly
necessary but the process is not yet completed. There IS no
I
generally received body of doctrine replacing the old. and many
of the fundamental points at issue remain disputed. Further­
more attention has tended to be largely concentrated on
phonetic questions raised by Hittite, and matters of morpho­
logy. on which its evidence is also of fundamental importance.
have been less exhaustively studied.
In th/.:se circumstances I have attempted to present a reason­
ably consistent account of the comparative grammar of Sanskrit
based on the evaluation of the new evidence. A work like this
is not the .place to enter into discussion of the various conflicting
theories that are in the field. if only for reasons of space. and
bibliographical references have been systematically omitted.
What has been written in recent years on these problems has
been taken into account, and such theories as appear acceptable
are incorporated in this exposition. It is hoped that it will go
some way to providing ,an up-to-date synthesis of a subject
which in its present state is hardly accessible outside the widely
scattered specialist literature.
The study of Sanskrit has advanced recently in another direc­
tion also. Investigation of the influence of the pre-Aryan
languages of India on Sanskrit and on Indo-Aryan in its later
stages, has shown that this is considerable and solid results
have been achieved. As far as the structure of the language is
concerned, particularly in its early stage, which is the only one
relevant to the comparative study of Indo-European. this influ­
ence hardly counts at alL On the other hand in the field of
vocabulary it is very important that the Indo-European and
non-Indo-European elements should be separated. The last
chapter of the book contains a summary of the main findings
on the part of the subject so far as established at the present
stage. Future work will no doubt add more.
T. BURROW
~
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
A number of alterations to the text of the The Sanskrit Language
have been made in this edition, the principal ones being as
follows. In Chapter I the latter part of Section 6 has been
rewritten to conform with the now prevailing opinion that the
Aryan vestiges of the ancient Near East are to be connected
specifically with Indo-Aryan. Also rewritten are Section II and
t, (in part) Section 17 of Chapter III to take account of the
conclusions reached on those topics in the articles of mine which
are quoted in the Appendix. Chapter VIII has been renamed
Loanwords in Sanskrit, so that loanwords from Greek and
Iranian (Section 2) can be dealt with in it as well as loanwords
from AustIo-Asiatic and Dravidian (Section I). The list of
loanwords from Dravidian in this chapter has been shortened by
the omission of some items now considered to. be false or
dubious,
At the'.end an Appendix has been added containing references
to the rrla~t important contributions to the subject which have
appeared since 1955, and also some supplementary notes.
September I972 T. BURROW
". #
vii
.r.
CONTENTS
PREFACE page v
1. SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN I
II. OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF SANSKRIT 35
III. PHONO'LOGY 67
\­
IV. THE FORMATION OF NOUNS 118
V. THE DECLENSION OF NOUNS 220
VI. NUMEHALS, PRONOUNS, INDECLINABLES 258
vn. THE VERB 289
VIII. LOANWORDS IN SANSKRIT 374
APPENDIX TO THE THIRD EDITION 390
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 399
INDEX 402
,.
ix
CHAPTER I
SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN
§ 1. INDO-ARYAN AND INDO-IRANIAN
.
In the greater part of India today languages are spoken which
:1.
are derived from a single form of speech which was introduced
into India by invaders from the north-west more than three
thousand years ago. The invading peoples were known in their
own language as iirya-, a word which is also commonly used as
an adjective meaning' noble, honourable '. Behind them in
Central Asia remained kindred peoples who eventually occupied
the plateau of Iran, as well as large tracts of Central Asia.
These peoples used the same name of themselves, in Av estan
airya-. and from the genitive plural of this word the modern
name Iran is ultimately derived. In conformance with this
usage the term A ryan is now used as the common name of these
peoples and their languages; alternatively the term Indo­
Iranian is commonly used. To distinguish the Indian branch
from the Iranian, the term Indo-Aryan has been coined, and as
applied to language, it covers the totality of languages and
dialects derived fronl this source from the earliest times to the
present day. It is practical to distinguish three periods, Old,
Middle and Modern Indo-Aryan. The classical form of Old
Indo-Aryan eventually came to be designated by the term
Sa1JZskrta- meaning · polished, cultivated, correct (according to
the rules of grammar) " in contradistinction to Priikrta the
speech of the uneducated masses, which was the same Indo­
Aryan in origin, but was subject to a process of steady change
and evolution. As a term to distinguish Indo-Aryan from the
non-Aryan languages the adjective arya-· was used in opposition
to mlecchd- ' barbarian '. In addition we may note that one of
the terms for' speech', bhiirati (sc. viik) had originally an ethnic
sense, meaning' language of the Bharatas
',1
1 At an early period the most prominent of the Indo~Aryan trillf's. whence
also the indigenous name of India bhiirata(-lIar-?a).
2 SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN
Sanskrit in its narrower sense applies to standard classical
Sanskrit as regulated by the grammarians but may be con­
veniently used'more widely as equivalent to Old Indo-Aryan.
In this sense it covers both classical Sanskrit and the pre­
classical or Vedic language. Middle Indo-Aryan, that is Prakrit
in the widest sense of the term, comprises three successive
stages of developmen.t: (r) The earliest stage is represented in
literature by P<lli, the language of the canonical writings of the
Thera-vada school of Buddhism. This is a language of the cen­
turies immediately preceding the Christian era. On the same
level of development are the various dialects recorded in the
inscriptions of Asoka (c. 250 B.C.), and also the language of other
early inscriptions. (2) Prakrit in the narrower sense of the word,
or Standard Literary Prakrit, represents the stage of develop­
ment reached some centuries after the Christian era. It is
found mainly in the Drama and in the religious writings of the
Jains. The various literary forms of Prakrit were stabilised by
grammarians at this period and, as a written language, it re­
mains essentially unchanged during the succeeding centuries.
(3) Apabhrarpsa is known from texts of the tenth century A.D.
but as a literary language it was formed some centuries earlier.
It represents the final stage of Middle Indo-Aryan, the one
immediately preceding the emergence of the Modem Indo­
Aryan languages. The Modern languages, Bengali, Hindi,
Gujarati, Marathi, etc., begin to be recorded from about the end
of the first millennium A.D., and from then their development can
be followed as they gradually acquire their present-day form.
Thus we have before us in India three thousand years of
continuous linguistic history, recorded in literary documents.
During the course of this period a single, and originally alien
idiom has spread over the greater part of the country, and,
evolving by slow degrees, has resulted in the various languages
now spoken in Northern and Central India. Enormous changes
have taken place during this time, and the languages we meet
today are very different indeed frOITl the ancient speech
spoken by the invading Aryan tribes. Nevertheless the docu­
ment:ltion available enables us to follow in detail the various
intermediate stages of development and to observe how.
by changes hardly noticeable from generation to generation, an
original language has altered into descendant languages which
superficially at any rate, are now barely recognisable as the same.
SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN 3
The earliest document of the linguistic history of Indo­
Aryan is the lJgveda, which, by rough guess-work, is placed in
the region of 1000 B.C. The language we find there is the source
from which all later developments in India have arisen. But
this language itself had evolved out of a yet earlier form of
speech, by precisely the same kind of slow change and altera­
tion which caused it to evolve later into something else. This
earlier evolution is unrecorded by any direct documentation,
but it can be reconstructed in considerable detail by means of
comparison with related languages. By this method two stages
in the prehistory of the language can be established: (1) By
comparison of early Indo-Aryan with the very closely related
Iraniallr it is possible to form a fairly accurate idea of the
original Indo-Iranian or Aryan language from which both have
evolved. {z} By comparing Indo-Aryan and Iranian with the
other Indo-European languages (enumerated below) it is P()S­
sible atso togo beyond this, and to reconstruct in general out­
line the characteristics of the original language from which all
these are derived.
Since Iranian in view of its very close relationship with Indo­
Aryan is of the first importance for the study of Indo-Aryan
philology, a short account of its distribution and documentation
is desirable. The migration of the Indo-Aryans to India brought
about, or perhaps was the final stage of, the separation of the
primitive Aryan community into two distinct divisions which
henceforth evolved separately in linguistic as in other respects.
The Iranians left behind in the region of the Ox us valley
1
proceeded to expand rapidly in various directions, occupying
not only the Iranian plateau which remaint;d -their centre of
gravity, but also large tracts of Central Asia, extending on the
one hand to the confines of China and on the other hand to the
plains of South Russia. From an early period Iranian showed a
much stronger tendency to differentiation into separate dialects
which soon became independent languages than was the case
with Indo-Aryan, which for geographical and other reasons
maintained a comparative unity over most of North India for
a very long period.
For the old period Iranian is represented by documents in
Avestan and Old Persian, and it is these texts which are of
1 A recollection ofChorasmia as their original home is preserved in the
traditions of the ancient Iranians.