60
SANSKRIT STUDIES
reaching beyond things Indian. The modern student, on the other hand, has vast opportunities for extending his knowledge and it is therefore his duty to make the study of Sanskrit comparative. The science of language has established a close kinship among communities inhabiting various parts of the globe and unless we compare ancient Indian thoughts and modes of expression with those of kindred communities of the past, we cannot be said to have arrived at the truth. I may illustrate the advantages of pursuing the comparative method of study by means of a well-known example. The Sanskrit words sura and asura are quite familiar to us. Asura is commonly explained as the opposite of sura — a + sura, i.e., ‘not god’, i.e., ‘ demon So long as we restrict our enquiry to Sanskrit literature of the classical period, i.e., to works produced during the past twenty-five centuries nearly, no suspicion arises as regards the current explanation of these two words. But when we extend our search farther back and examine the Rgveda , we find the term asura used, contrary to our expectation, to glorify gods such as Varuna who is one of the most benevolent of Vedic gods. What could be the explanation of this unexpected use ? The old Pandit who interpreted the Veda, also realized the difficulty but he could not get beyond the traditional explana- tion of asura and therefore assumed that the word applied to the gods in the Veda — although bearing the same form — was distinct from the common word meaning ‘ demon According to him the two were homonyms, i.e., words with the same form but with different meanings. The Vedic word was referred to the root as ‘ to throw Sayana thus paraphrases it in one place — asurah anistaksepanasilah , i.e., ‘able to throw away or remove misery or what is disagreeable/ We cannot help feeling that this interpretation is far-fetched and artificial. The modern scholar, on the other hand, with his more extensive knowledge of Indo-Gei manic literature gets light upon this dark point from a quarter least suspected by the Pandit, for the Zend or old Persian Scriptures contain the word ahura used similarly in addressing gods. By applying a simple law of phonetic correspondence between Zend and Vedic — commonly illustrated by the pair of words Sindhu and Hindu — we see that this word asura is only a variant of ahura . The inference is that the bad sense which attaches
