[PDF]A Sanskrit Grammar

A


SANSKRIT. GRAMMAE

FOE BEGINNEES


BY

F. MAX MULLEE


I^JSW AJS-J) AJ3BIDGED JEBITION

ACCENTED AND TEANSLITEEATED THEOUGHOUT
WITH A CHAPTER ON SYNTAX
AND AN APPENDIX ON CLASSICAL METRES


BY




A. A. MACDONELL, M.A., Ph.D.


:embee of the geeman oeiejttal society and of

T^eAiOYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY OF GEEAT BEITAIN AND IB^ELAND

^ ^ '


LOND/
LONGMANS,

18|6


Ali ri^ktl reserved



PRr*NTED DY HOH


0xf0rtr

» iRT, !> ^rVTER *"0 ’’"HE YMVERSTty



TO THE NEW EDITIONr'

As I am growing old I begin to feel that it is difficult,
if not impossible, to keeji my books or to revive

them constantly by what we call new editions. ^Tien I had
revised the last edition of my Sanskrit Grammar, I bade
farewell to it. What I had wished to achieve, little as it
may seem, I had achieved, namely, to supply a grammatical
manual, correct in all its rules and paradigms, and contain-
ing fcMT all important matters references to Pa?iini, the
highest grammatical authority, recognised as such by all
post-Yedic writers of Sanskrit.

It may not seem, as I said, to be a very high aim to produce
a correct grammar, and to make its correctness dependent on
the authority of another grammarian. But when we examine
other giammars, and see, for instance, such foims as naman
^ given through successive editions as a Nominative and Accu-
sative singular, when we see such breaches of the simplest
phonetic rules as in Benfey’s impossible form ad ak tarn etc.,
matched in one of the most recent Sanskrit Grammars by
Y hitney (arauttam)^, a claim to freedom from clerical errors
wiU hardly be considered a very modest claim. Nor do I
flatter myself to have always reached that standard of cor-
rectness which is represented to us in the truly marvellous
work of Pa^iini.

It has been argued, not without a certain plausibility, .
that no grammar, not even that of Pa?^ini, ought to be
constituted into an infallible tribunal, but that the lan-
guage itself and the literature should form the final court


^ Kurze Grammatik, § 265, ix, p. 178, paradigm dah.
^ Sanskrit Grammar, § 882, paradigm rudh.



IV


PREFACE


of appeal in all questions of grammatical right or wrong.^
True as this principle would be eveiywhere else, it is not so
in Sanskrit, at least, not with regard to that literature for
which alone my grammar is intended. The whole of San-^
skrit literature, with the exception of the Yedic and ihe
Buddhistic, is so completely under the sway of Panini's
rules that even a poet like Kalidasa would be considered
guilty of a grammatical blunder, if he used a form not recog-
nised by Pacini. This is a state of things unknown in any
other literature, and supplies, I believe, a perfect justifica-
tion for the absolute deference paid by myself and others to
Pa?zini’s authority.

There is, of course, some debatable land, such as the two
great epic poems, and again, some rifacdmenti of Yedic
works, such as Manu and other law-books, in w^hich Sncient
Mandasa forms occur and in which Pa^iini^s authority is not
completely recognised. Still even there the more ancient and
more historical forms, which contravene the rules of Pa^dni,
are looked upon by all native scholars as exceptions, so
much so that when I myself appealed to the authority of
Yyasa, the reputed author of the Mahahharata, in suppoit
of such a form as hiwsasva, which, in my Sanskrit trans-
lation of ‘God save the Queen,’ I had borrow^ed from the
Mahahharata, I was told that this form, not having the
authority of Pawini, would be offensive to the ears of native
scholars. Though the case was by no means so clear as my
friendly critics imagined, I gladly yielded to their remon-
strances, changing himsasva into u^'^^inddhi.

My own opinion was, and is still, that a Sanskrit Grammar
for Beginners, such as mine was meant to be, and a grammar
that might safely be used by candidates for the Civil Service
of India, without their running the risk of being punished
for forms which they learn from well-accredited hooks,
should not attempt more than to give such rules as can
claim the authority of Pa?zini. To attempt the higher task
of writing an historical grammar of the Sanskrit language,



TO THE NEW EDITION.


V


fiever entered my mind. If one knows the difficulties of an
historical grammar of Greek, Latin, or German, one may
yell doubt whether the time has come for attempting a
history of the language of a country in which nothing is so
entirely absent as history. I know, of course, that I haye
been charged with inconsistency, because I ventured to intro-
duce into my grammar the Yedic system of accentuation,
which is not recognised in post-Tedic Sanskrit, and has its
proper place in an historical grammar only. I must plead
guilty to that charge, but I considered the accent so useful
for purely practical purposes, and so full of interest for the
Science of Language, that I decided to maik it through-
out, at least in the transliterated portions of my grammar,
where-sjer it could he done with certainty and with a hope
of practical usefulness.

It is interesting to see how the same objections which
were raised against the old Greek and Latin school-gram-
mars, begin to be raised against the grammars of Sanskrit.
It is well known that ever so many forms are given in the
paradigms of raTrra) and amo, which are never found in real
use, while some are actually impossible. It can hardly be
called a very startling discovery, therefore, that in Sanskrit
grammars also many forms occur which are given for the
sake of systematic completeness only. I know at least of no
scholar who imagined that all the forms given in the
paradigms of a Sanskrit grammar have actually been met
with in literary works. But how can that be helped?
Pupils must learn their paradigms by rote, and no one would
suggest leaving out the gen. plur. of mema, because it never
occuiTed in any classical Latin author. Should we leave
out the rules according to which linquo forms its participle
lictuB, because in classical Latin it never occurs except in
rdictus ? Though we may speak with a certain amount
of confidence, when we say that tcUoy for instance, always
forms its perfect with a preposition, namely, mBtuU, who
would venture in the present state of Sanskrit scholar-



VI


PEEPA-CE


ship to say which roots, as collected by native gramma-*
lians, occur -ttith or without prepositions, which have been
used by certain writers or in certain periods only, and
which are merely presupposed in order to account, rightly or
wrongly, for the formation of substantives, adjectives, * 01 *
particles? "We may all have an ideal conception of what an
historical grammar of Sanskrit ought to be, but true scholars
do not ask for what is impossible. They are satisfied if they
can place into the hands of young students a grammatical
manual which at all events does not teach them forms which
they have afterwards to unlearn, and Tvhich every examiner
would mark as ‘ Very Bad.'

The first beginnings which have been made in collecting
materials for a really historical giammar of Sanskrit ^re, no
doubt, very valuable, particularly when they are confined to
certain chapters of grammar, or again, to certain periods
within which some kind of completeness is attainable, even
in the present state of Sanskrit scholarship. Scholars such
as Benfey, Ludwig, Delbruck, Wilhelm, J oily, J acohi, Lan-
man, Avery, Bloomfield, Edgren and others have rendered
most excellent service in collecting materials with which
hereafter a History of the Language of India may be con-
structed, and even the attempt, premature as no doubt it is,
to gather up these materials into some kind of historical
grammar reflects great credit both on the courage and on the
industry of Professor Whitney, of Yale College in America.

But is an historical grammar of Sanskrit possible, before
we know the real history of Sanskrit 1

Does the Yedic literature which we possess in its four
periods, the A’Aandas, Mantra, Br^hma^m, and Sutra periods,
really represent the whole of the ancient history of Sanskrit ?
What is that bhasha literature, presupposed in Pa^iini's
grammar, which is not Yedic, and yet truly historical ? What
is the real date of Pa^iini’s grammar, which forms the one
broad line of demarcation between natural and scholastic
Sanskrit 1 What is the date of the Mahabharata and Kama-



TO THE NEW EDITION.


VII


ja?ia, and can we distingiii&li in them between portions tliat
conform and others that do not conform to the niles of
Pamni? What is the date of the introduction of writing
into India, first for monumental, and afterwards for purely
literary purposes? When can we detect the first certain
traces of Buddhism, of Greek influences, and of that complete
literary paralysis which seems to have been produced in
India h^the invasion of Northern Barbarians ^ Lastly, what
is the earliest date that can be assigned to what I have
called ‘the Renaissance of Sanskrit Literature,’ which com-
prises neaily all the works that have hitherto been studied
in our schools and umversities ?

These are a few of the questions which will have to he
answe:|jed before we can form a conception of what an his-
torical grammar of Sanskrit ought to be.

And even if all these questions should admit of some kind
of provisional answer, enabling us to construct a practicable
road through the drifting sands of Indian chronology, how
could we speak of a liistory of the language of India, in
which the truly historical literary monuments, the books
collected in the Buddliist Canon, whether written in Pali
or in several distinct dialects of Sanskrit, find no place? It
is easy to ignoie the fact that the edicts of king Asoka in
the third century b. c., and again, the Mathui'a Inscriptions
of the time of king Kanishka represent the real history of
the language of India, and that the Chinese translations of
literary works belonging to the Buddhist Canon authenticate
the very language in which they are written at a time when
Vedic literature had ceased, and modern Sanskrit literature
had not yet begun to exist. But these are stubborn facts, and
however much ignored at present, they will have to be reckoned
with sooner or later. Lastly, can that be called a histoiy of
the language of India, in which the true relation between
Sanskrit and Prakrit, whether real or ai-tificial, has not been
determined, and in which the question whether the later
scholastic Sanskrit, beginning from the fifth century a. d., is



viii PREFACE

a natural development or an artificial renaismnce^ is neveip
even mooted If ^vith the indices to the Veda, to Pamni,
to the Mahabharata, Eam%a^na, and Manu, and with the
materials so laboriously collected in Boehtlingk and Eoth’s
Dictionary, we could hope to construct a complete histor;f of
Sanskrit, an historical grammar of Sanskrit might indeed
seem within the limits of possibility. But considering how
many connecting links are still wanting, and how nTany new
discoveries have been made of late by Professor Buhler and
others, particnlarly with reference to that true histoiy of
language which can be read in Inscriptions only, ail scholars
will probably hold here also discretion the better part of
valour. It gives me real pleasure to express my sincere
gratitude to Professor Whitney, and even more to hi^prede-
cessors and fellow- workers, for the light which their labours
have shed on certain phases in the historical growth of San-
skrit, and for the laboriously constructed indices which they
have so generously placed at our disposal, but I cannot but
question the wisdom of embodying these results in a i3ractical
grammar of the Sanskrit language.

When a demand arose in England for such a grammar, a
grammar that might safely he placed in the hands of begin-
ners, feeling unequal myself to the task of preparing a new
edition of my grammar, I requested Mr. Macdonell to under-
take the task of not only revising, but of considerably
shortening it. Mr. Macdonell has had far more experience
as a teacher than I can claim, and I have left him perfectly
free in his choice of what he considered essential to beginners.
To him will belong the whole credit, if my gi’ammar should
continue to prove useful to young students of Sanskrit, and
I now leave it to him to explain the principles by which he
has been guided in adapting my old grammar to the require-
ments of his pupils.

E. M. M.

Maloja, Exgadix, August 20, 18S5.



TO THE NEW EDITION.


IS


The experience of some years’ teaching has convinced me
that Sanskrit, compared with other dead languages, is not
didicuit to learn. The fact that the ordinary Sanskrit verb
has no subjunctive, only one imperative, one infinitive, and two
optatives, altogether only thirteen moods and tenses in each
voice, while Greek has upwards of thirty, would alone go
far to prove the comparative simplicity of Sansknt Acci-
dence. Again, the absence in Sanskrit of the indirect
construction, which constitutes a conspicuous difficulty of
Syntax in the classical languages, is in itself a tolerably
clear proof that the structure of complex sentences in
Sanskrit must he far less involved than in Latin or Greek.
On the other hand, though it must he admitted that the
phonetic laws of Sanskrit present greater difficulties than in
other languages, most of these difficulties will disappear when
it is pointed out that the rules of Sandhi rest on two leading
principles, the avoidance of hiatus in the case of vowels and
assimilation in the case of consonants,

I feel sure that the exaggerated idea of the difficulties of
Sanskrit commonly entertained is due to the fact that the
amount of matter contained in the Sanskrit grammars
hitherto published in England and America is far too
exhaustive for elementary purposes. Beginners are not aware
that a large proportion of the matter presented to them,
though necessary for a minute and critical knowledge or high
proficiency in composition, may he altogether dispensed with
by those whose chief object is to be able to read with ease
the best works of classical Sanskrit literature.

It was therefore with much pleasure that, at Professor
Max Muller’s request, I undertook the task of abridging his
grammar, — which is by all Sanskrit scholars accepted as a
standard work, — and of adapting it to the requirements of the
many students who wish to obtain a good practical knowledge



X


PEEFACE


of Sanskrit, but have not sufficient leisure to make a specisJ
study of the grammar. I feel a confident hope that this
edition will at the same time supply students of comparative
philology with the essential grammatical knowledge of
language which must form the groundwork of their studies.
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