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 many generations 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 I but the process is not yet completed. There IS no 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
PHONO'LOGY 67
NUMEHALS, PRONOUNS, INDECLINABLES 258
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 399
§ 1. INDO-ARYAN AND INDO-IRANIAN
In the greater part of India today languages are spoken which 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 A vestan 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.
3 SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN
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.
4 SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN
prime importance for comparison with Vedic Sanskrit. Avesta is the name given to the ancient collection of sacred writings preserved by the adherents of the Zoroastrian religion, and it is after this that the language is named. It is an eastern Iranian dialect, the exact location· of which has not been precisely determined. The oldest section of the A vesta f the Ga8as are attributed to Zoroaster himself. Concerning his date there has been much dispute, and it seems that the traditional date of the Zoroastrians themselves, which places him around 600 B.C.
can hardly be correct. The language of the Ga8as is no less ancient than that of the f!.gveda. and for this and other reasons the composition of the two texts must roughly to the same period. Old Persian, a south-western dialect, and one showing tendencies to modernisation in comparison with the earliest A vestan, is preserved in inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings in a special cuneiform alphabet invented for the purpose.
The relations between this ancient Iranian and the language of the Veda are so close that it is not possible satisfactorily to study one without the other. Gramlnatically the differences are very small; the chief differentiation in the earliest period lies in certain characteristic and well-defined phonetic changes which have affected Iranian on the one hand and Indo-Aryan on the other. It is quite possible to find verses in the oldest portion of the Avesta, which simply by phonetic substitutions according to established laws can be turned into intelligible Sanskrit. The greater part of the vocabulary is held in common and a large list could be provided of words shared between the two which are absent from the rest of Indo-European. This resemblance is particularly striking in the field of culture and religion, and may be illustrated by a few examples: Ski. hiratJya-~ Av. zaranya- ' gold', Skt. sena, Av. haena, O. Pers. hainii 'army', Skt. .r~ti-, Av., O. Pers. arsti- 'spear', Skt. k~atrd-, Av. xsa8ra- 'sovereignty t, Skt. dsura-, Av. ahura­ ( lord " Skt. Av. yasna- 'sacrifice', Skt. h6tar-, Av. zaotar- ' sacrificing priest', Skt. s6ma-, A v. haoma- ' the sacred drink Soma " Skt. dthar1.ltw- ' a class of priest 't Av. a8aurvan-, a(Jravan- ' fire-priest " Skt. aryal"ilan-, Av. airyaman- ' member of a religious sodality'. In the same way we find the names of divinities and mythological personages held in common, e.g., Skt. l\1itra-, Av. mi8ra-, Skt, Ya1na-, son of Vivdsvant-, Av. Yima, son of Vr~'aJJ7.'ant-, Skt. AptttJt Napat, Av. ap'Itn napat
SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN 5 ( Grandson of the waters J (a divinity), etc. In this field, how­ ever, movements of religious reform with which the name of Zarathustra is associated have tended to alter the picture from the Iranian side. For instance Av. daeva-, O. Pers. daiva-, corresponding to Sanskrit deva- ( god' has acquired the meaning of < devil J. In the same way some Vedic divinities appear in the Avesta as evil spirits: Skt. lndra-, Niisatya-: Av. Indra. N d!Jhai()ya-.
The material for Old Iranian is somewhat restricted both as to quantity and as regards the number of dialects represented. For the MiddJ.e Iranian period, thanks mainly to discoveries of the present century, the documentation is much wider. We now have, in addition to Middle Persian proper (Pahlavi) ex­ tensive documents in two important East Iranian languages which are not represented in the early period, namely Sogdian and Saka (mainly in the dialect of Khotan, but with a few texts in a neighbouring dialect). The publication and interpreta­ tion of the material in these languages has progressed rapidly and successfully, but the results are not yet in the main avail­ able in a form easily accessible to students of general Indo-Aryan or Indo-European philology. Eventually a considerable contri­ bution should be available from this source, because, although they cannot compete in antiquity with the Avestan and Old Persian texts, they constitute independent branches of Iranian which were not previously known aI1d therefore have preserved things which were lost elsewhere from an early period.!
In the mediaeval period the domain of Iranian became very much restricted, mainly on account of Turkish expansion. Over large tracts of Central Asia Iranian has long since died out. It has remained principally in Iran or Persia proper, where modern Persian can look back to a continuous literary tradition of over a thousand years. On the periphery of this area, par­ ticularly on the Indo-Iranian frontier, there are still many minor languages surviving in small areas, and one which is still important, namely Pasta, the official language of Afghanistan. At the other side of the territory in· the Northern Caucasus Ossetic still survives from one of the numerous Iranian invas­ ions of South Russia.
1 For Instance the IE word for' (young) pig " Lat. porcus. Lith. paiSas, was not previously known in Indo-Iranian, but has now turned up in Khotanese : pa.'sa-.
SANSKRIT" AND INDO-EUROPEAN6
§2. PRIMITIVE INDO-EuROPEAN
The Indo-Iranian languages which have been briefly out­ lined form together one branch of the Indo-European family. The discovery of the historical relationship of -the members of the -Indo-European family was a direct result of the discovery of the Sanskrif language and literature by European scholars towards the dose of the eighteenth century. The similarity of the Sanskrit language, both in grammar and vocabulary to the classical languages of Europe is so far-reaching that scholars familiar with Latin and Greek could not fail to be struck by the resemblance. Since up to this time there had existed no clear idea of the real nature of the development of languages and of their relations with each othert the explanation of this unex­ pected but quite undeniable affinity could not be provided without a completely new and scientific approach to the study of language. In his famous address to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in I786, Sir William Jones indicated in broad outlines the significance of the new discovery:
'The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed that no philologer could examine them at all without believing them to have sprung from sante common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a differ~nt idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.'
The truth of these remarks has been adequately demon­ strated by the subsequent development of the science of Corn-­ parative Philology, which dates from this time. During the past century and a half the languages of the Indo-European family have been the subject of intensive scientific study. The main features of the parent language have been reliably recon­ structed, and the historical and prehistorical deVelopment of the several branches has been worked out in detail. The methods and principles employed have been subject to pro­
7 SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN
gressive improvement and refinement, and new discoveries have continued…