THE ORIGIN OF SANSKRIT 7
form gondiity the pronominal plurals asme and yusme, the short forms yat and tat, and verbal forms in r. Traces of the sub- junctive, the infinitive in tave, the aorist akar, the instrumental in ebhis exist in Prakrit, but are banned in Sanskrit. On the other hand, although Panini recognizes fully the Vedic accent, it can hardly be doubted that already by his time in actual speech in many regions it had yielded in part to an expiratory accent. The tendency to such a result is already visible in the Rgveda, where duhita by the testimony of the metre must at times be read dhita, comparable with Pali dhita ; ' the weakening of bh and dh to h occurs there normally after unaccented syllables, 2 and the curious mode of notation of the accent in the Qatapatha Brahmana has with some ground been ascribed to a stage of transition from the musical to the expiratory accent. 3
We must not, however, exaggerate the activity of the gram- marians to the exte nt of suggesting with some writers that Classic al Sanskrit i s an art i ficial creation, a product* of the .brahmins whe n they sought to counteract the Buddhist creation of an artistic literature "I nYali b y reca sting thek_QjyjL .Pll.kntjc_ speech with the aid~o~f~the Ve dic langua ge^ It is, in point of tact, perfectly obvious that there is a steady progress through the later Samhitas, the Brahmanas, and the Aranyakas and Upanisads, and that the Bhasa, the spoken language of Panini's grammar, is closely related to, though not identic with, the language of the Brahmanas and the older Upanisads. Nor in point of fact does Classical Sanskrit present the appearance of an artificial product ; simplified as it is in comparison with the redundant luxury of the Vedic texts, it yet presents no artificial symmetry, but rather admits exceptions in bewildering profusion, showing that the grammarians were not creators, but were en- gaged in a serious struggle to bring into handier shape a rather intractable material.
1 Luders, KZ. xlix. 236 f.
2 Wackemagel, Altind. Gramm., i. 253 f. 5 Leumann, KZ. xxxi. a 2 f.
- Hoemle and Griersou, Bihari Did., pp. 33 ff. ; Senart, JA. s£i. 8, viii. 318 fF.
Contrast Franke, B. Beitr., xvii. 86; Boxwell, Tram. Phil. Soc. 1885-7, pp. 656 ff. Ponssin (Indo-euwpiens , pp. 191 ff.) stresses the literary character of Sanskrit.
