be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its
future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit
will be resting in its periodical pralaya; and the Attic will be
followed later by the Latin of Virgil. Something ought to have
whispered to us that there was also a time--before the original Aryan
settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the
fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred
Sanskrita Bhasha--when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed
subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise
and fall. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was
only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini. Panini,
Katyayana or Patanjali did not create it; it has existed throughout
cycles, and will pass through other cycles still.
Professor Max Miller is willing to admit that a tribe of Semitic
nomads--fourteen centuries before the year 1 of the Westerns--knew well
the art of writing, and had their historically and scientifically proven
"book of the covenant and the tables 'with the writing of God upon
them.'" Yet the same authority tells us that the Aryans could neither
read nor write until the very close of the Brahmanic period. "No trace
of writing can be discovered (by the philologists) in the Brahmanical
literature before the days of Panini." Very well, and now what was the
period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished?
One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient
ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of
the second century of the Christian era! Only, after fixing Panini's
period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other
calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the
Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a
dilemma. For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could
not have been illiterate; for firstly, in the Lalita Vistara, a
canonical book recognized by the Sanskritists, attributed by Max Muller
to the third Buddhist council (and translated into Tibetan), our Lord
Buddha is shown as studying, besides Devanagari, sixty-three other
alphabets specified in it as being used in various parts of India; and
secondly, though Megasthenes and Nearchus do say that in their time the
laws of Manu were not (popularly) reduced to writing (Strabo, xv. 66 and
73) yet Nearchus describes the Indian art of making paper from cotton.
He adds that the Indians wrote letters on cotton twisted together
(Strabo, xv. 53 and 67). This would be late in the Sutra period, no
doubt, according to Professor Miller's reasoning. Can the learned
gentleman cite any record within that comparatively recent period
showing the name of the inventor of that cotton-paper, and the date of
his discovery? Surely so important a fact as that, a novelty so
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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