permitted therefore to recapitulate what I have already said in regard to the term ‘Sanskrit’ before explaining what I conceive ought to be included under the term ‘Sanskrit literature’.

     By Sanskrit, then, is meant the learned language of India -the language of its cultured inhabitants - the language of its religion, its literature, and science - not by any means a dead language, but one still spoken and written, by educated men in all parts of the country, from Cashmere to Cape Comorin, from Bombay to Calcutta and Madras! Sanskrit, in short, represents, I conceive, the learned form of the language brought by the Indian branch of the great Aryan race - into India. For, in point of fact the course of the development of language in India resembles the course of Aryan languages in other countries, the circumstances of whose history have been similar.

     “The language of the immigrant Aryan race has prevailed over that of the aborigines, but in doing so has separated into two lines, the one taken by the educated and learned classes, the other by the unlearned the latter again separating into various provincial sub-lines. Doubtless in India, from the greater exclusiveness of the educated few, and the desire of a proud priesthood to keep the key of knowledge in their own possession, the language of the learned classes became so highly elaborated that it received the name SamskŠita, or ‘perfectly constructed speech’ (see it p.xii), both to denote its superiority to the common dialects (called in contradistinction PrƒkŠita) and its more exclusive dedication to religions and literary purposes. Not that the Indian vernaculars are exclusively spoken languages, without any literature of their own; for some of them (as, for example Hindi, Hindustani, and Tamil, the last belonging to the Dravidian and not AryaŒ family have produced valuable literary works, although their subject-matter is often borrowed from the Sanskrit.” p.xx.

      “A paper written by Pandit Syƒmaji Krishna-Varmƒ on ‘Sanskrit as a Living Language in India, was read by him at theBerlin Oriental Congress of 1881, and excited much interest. He argues very forcibly that ‘Sanskrit as settled in the Ash—ƒdhyƒayi