11
ries no doubt looked upon the Vedas and the Brahmanas
as Sacred literature; but they did not go the length of con-
sidering them beyond the scope of their interpretation or
explanation. Panini indeed speaks even of new Brah-
manas. ¹ But in the process of time the vedic hymns
gradually but steadily grew in sanctity till it came to be
considered a sacrilege to subject them to a gramma-
tical investigation. Hence it is that scholiasts of Panini,
and especially text-book writers among Hindus gen-
erally, have done but scanty justice to his Vedic aphor-
isms. I would thus claim even more justification for
writing the present volume than the first.
In writing the present volume, as well as the first,
I have tried to avail myself of the results of the labours
of such Oriental Scholars as Professor Whitney and the
Rev. Thomas Clark, and I acknowlede my indebtedness
to them. But I have profited much more by the suggest-
iveness of their works than by anything that they act-
ually contained. I have, however, not allowed myself
to be dazzled by the new light from the west and be led away
from the beaten path of the orthodox school of Panini's
interpreters. New departures from traditional lines of
treatment will indeed be found in my work; but, it will be
observed that such attempts have been made only as occas-
ional digressions, apparently calculated to relieve the in-
evitable monotony of alternating explauations and illustra-
tions. It is only at the conclusion the reader is called
upon to take a general survey of the Paninian system and
test its soundness from a historical point of view.
qui
In this book I have endeavoured to reconcile the
methods of grammatical investigation favoured by the
oriental scholars of the west with the orthodox methods
(1) e. g. पुराणप्रोक्तेषु ब्राह्मणकल्पेषु IV. 3-105
पृष्ठम्:Laghu paniniyam vol2.djvu/७
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