English
It would be out of place to enter — '-'- * this subject, but I cannot pass it over with- 5-^^ *><:> least pointing out the valuable materials *^ ^^ in these works, for tracings tbe origin of '"^ *ie most ancient branches of philosophy. ^^^ j-e only two nations in the vp-liole history of -^(frliich have conceived independently, and ^^^^^^ laV suggestions from others, the t^wo sciences o*^^ ^^ Orammar, the Hindus and the Greeks. ^5^ J €3 ^j^<3 Arabs and Jews^ among the Semitic ^ ^^^^ , v^tf3 elaborated their own system of grammar, ^^^' ^^mtx^^^^ ^th the peculiar character of th.eir ^c^ox- ^ j^^jy*^ owe to the Greeks the broad outlines ^^^* *it>i*^^ science, and they received from J^.ris- sLxrira^ - ^^^^ry impulse to a study of the categories ^ Jf^^^^ *^ no authoHty whatever for caUing the first t*^ ^^^^ , ^::::i<3minentarjr, as Dr. Roth does, I^aigama. Deva- Y *5fc^ -_ ^ sajne view when he says, ^Sr^^^^ir^T^ f^^mrf% ^ngdip> f^^mr- HISTOSr OF GRAHMAR. 159 of thought and speech* Our own grammaUcal terms came to ub from the Greeks ; and their history is curious enough, if we trace them back through the clumsy and frequently erroneous translations of the literary statesmen of Rome, to the scholars and critics of Alexandria, and finally to the early philosophers of Greece, the Stoics, Aristotle, Protagoras and Pytha- goras. But it is still more instructive to compare this development of the grammatical categories in Greece with the parallel, yet quite independent, history of gmoaunatical science in India. It is only by means of such a comparison that we can learn to understand what is lorganic, and what is merely accidental, in the growth of this science, aiid appreciate the real diffi- culties which had to be overcome in the classification of words and the arrangement of gnumnatical forms. The Greeks and Hindus started from opposite points. The Greeks be^gam with philosophy, oxkd endeavoured to transfer their philosophical terminotlogy to the facts of language. The Hindus began with coUeetiug the facts of language, and their generalisations never went beyond the external forms of speech. Thus the Hindus eKoel in accuracy^ the Greeks in grasp. The grammar of the former has ended in a colossal pedantJ*y; that of the latter still invigorates the mind of every rising generation throughout the civil- ised world. Language had become with ihe Hindus an object of wcmdi^ and meditation at a very early period. In the hymns of the Veda we meet with poetical and philo- sophical speculations on speech, and Sarasvatt, the god- dess of speech, is invoked as oneof the most powerful deities. The scientific interest in language, however, dates from a later period. It was called forth, no ELISXORY OF GRAMMAR* ^^ tlve careful study of a sacred literature, t>^ - J: ^odia, as elsewhere, called into life many an t- "* cience. In India the sacred strains of the rM^^ ^ere handed down with the greatest care, the L^ X^e of these songs constituted the only claim 'T^^ % of man for a higher life, and from a very *^^^ they were looked upon with such a super- '' **'*',,ve, that a mere error of pronunciation was ,xi^ ^^'j^ar their miraculous po^wer.* We need *^^^*^er-, therefore, that the minutest rules were ,,67-<3Xi ^^ ^^ ^j^g pronunciation of these hymns, and ^^^^^'^tic* VI gilts of the early teachers were led to ^^^ *J*^ nature of language and its grammatical I J^^^^-^^xr*.' Where so much depended on letters, it ■jis^ J -fchat words also and their grammatical vari- ****^ ijiX<l attract attention. A number of letters, ' ^ £ ^B-i^le letter, as K&ty&yana says, may form a -^^ ^-a^XciiS^*'**)' * number of syllables or even a '1*^ ll£.t>l^ may form a word (pada).* There are ^^ j^-^ ^r-^itions on letters, syllables, and -words in ^*^*^ ^^^^£^9 *"^ there are numerous expressions, rAbrxi^ ^^- ^|je Brfi-hmanas, which mark a certain ''"^^^ ^^-x-ammatical knowledge.* In the Brd,h- ^r&jasaneyins (xiii. 5. 1. 18) vre meet ^s for Singular, Dual, and Plural. In ^-upanishad (p. 135, ed. Roer) we find of letters, and technical terms such as Hits ; svara, vowels ; dshman, sibilants. -dst not expect in those treatises to find ^^ and scientific. It is in the Siitra lite- "^ *^ ' ^rffe^lig among the Polynesians is mentioned in ^^^sian Mythology, p. 32, entioned in ^^-^^ j>. 76. HISTORY OF ORAlfMAR. 161 ratare that we meet with discnssions on langaage of a purely scientific character ; and what we do find in the Pr&ti&^hya, in the Nirukta and P&nini, is quite sufficient to show that at their time the science of lan- guage was not of recent origin. I can only touch upon one point. It is well known how long it took before the Greeks arrived at a complete nomenclature for the parts of speech. Plato knew only of Noun (ovofxa) and Verb (p^jK^a), as the two component parts of speech, and for philosophical purposes Aristotle too did not go beyond that number. It is only in dis* cussing the rules of rhetoric that he is led to the admission of two more parts of speech, the <r6pha-[jLot (conjunctions) and apdpa (articles). The pronoun ayrayt//tia does not come in before Zenodotos, and the preposition (xpoflfo-i^) occurs first in Aristarchos. In the Pr&ti6d,khya, on the contrary, we meet at once with the following exhaustive classification of the parts of speech (xii. 5.) " The noun (n&ma), the verb (&khy&ta), the prepo- sition (upasarga), and the particle (nip&ta) are called by grammarians the four classes of words.^ The ' ^l4|iaiM4jq41Jll PiMM<)<Nl4lg: M<^lfilP>imf;i *)^d i<iif^ ^^q^ ^l^*i*i Plrll^i ^mPlfllHJX ^^ (^llrf : ^ k^l ; it means ^Hlffl<|^| ilTf%H) M tTOrr OF OBAMTMAR. ch we mark a being, a verb that 3eing; the latter is called a root 3 twenty prepositions, and these Dined with nouns or verbs. The 2 called particles. The verb ex- e preposition defines it; the noun •tides are but expletives. There es the particles -^which have no zh have, for we see that some par- Eiccoiint of their sense : but it is >w many there are o£ each class, used in. measure<i or in prose is adopted by most grammarians, explained by the author of the ting that there are four kinds of hat the verb is chiefly concerned ^th beings. He then brings in a I reminds us of the first introduc- , as distinct from the Hvo/jloc, by erb," he says, " when it expresses Ind of being which lasts from an :, such as he walks," he cooks" - express being (and not a beinff), mg that has become embodied in r .*!? ^l^'^T^ * " * walking," lltt' ^'^^^-^-- between fhe appellative, is established on a at on which Aristotle ascribed t^ character, and denies it. ^o t^ HISTOBT OF GRAMMAR. 163 The distinction of the numbers was first pointed out by Aristotle, but the technical terms for singular and plural (apidfjAg inxog^ TrXtidumxis) date from a later time. In India the terms for the three num- bers, Singular, Plural, and Dual, were known in the Br^mana period. Aristotle had no dear conception of cases, in the grammatical sense of the word. Ptosisj with him, refers to verbs as well as nouns* The introduction of the five cases, in our sense of the word, is due to the Stoics. In the Pr&ti^khyas we find not only a name for case, restricted to nouns (vibhakti, i. e. K'kitng) but the number of cases also is fixed at seven. The distinction of the genders is the only point on which the Greeks may claim a priority to the Hindus. It was known in Greece to Protagoras; whereas in India the Pr&ti^khyas seem to have passed it over, and it appears first in P&nini.^ There are some discussions in the beginning of the Nirukta which are of the highest interest with regard to etymology. While in Greece the notions of one of her greatest thinkers, as expressed in the Cratylus, represent the very infancy of etymological science, the Brahmans of India had treated some of the vital problems of etjrmology with the utmost sobriety. In the Prati6£Lkhya of E&ty&yana we find, besides the philosophical division of speech into nouns, verbs, prepositions and particles, another division of a purely grammatical nature, and expressed in the most strictly technical language. " Verbs with their con- fc fA^C ohZiv iari raO' avrh fffifiayrucov ' fififia 2e i^vi^ wydiriif 0i|- /iatrun) furu \p6voVf He oh^ty fUpoQ oii/iaiVei Kaff avT6f dtririp rat iwl tUv ovofiar^y, 1 KitTftyaniya Fir&ti^akhya, iv. 170. M 2 164 HISTORY OF GBAMMAB.