VI
PREFACE
of adopting this corpus of agreed doctrine to the needs of the student and general reader, and of the particular language described. Since then the .discovery of Hittite has revolution- ised Indo-European studies and a considerable part of the older theory has been unable to stand up to the new evidence. Consequently Indo-European studies can now be said to be in a state of flux. New theories have appeared, and are clearly necessary, but the process is not yet completed. There is no generally received body of doctrine replacing the old, and many of the fundamental points at issue remain disputed. Further- more attention has tended to be largely concentrated on phonetic questions raised by Hittite, and matters of morpho- logy, on which its evidence is also of fundamental importance, have been less exhaustively studied.
In these circumstances I have attempted to present a reason- ably consistent account of the comparative grammar of Sanskrit based on the evaluation of the new evidence, A work like this is not the .place to enter into discussion of the various conflicting theories that are in the field, if only for reasons of space, and bibliographical references have been systematically omitted. What has been written in recent years on these problems has been taken into account, and such theories as appear acceptable are incorporated in this exposition. It is hoped that it will go some way to providing an up-to-date synthesis of a subject which in its present state is hardly accessible outside the widely scattered specialist literature.
The study of Sanskrit has advanced recently in another direc- tion also. Investigation of the influence of the pre-Aryan languages of India on Sanskrit and on Indo-Aryan in its later stages, has shown that this is considerable and solid results have been achieved. As far as the structure of the language is concerned, particularly in its early stage, which is the only one relevant to the comparative study of Indo-European, this influ- ence hardly counts at all. On the other hand in the field of vocabulary it is very important that the Indo-European and non-Indo-European elements should be separated. The last chapter of the book contains a summary of the main finding^ on the part of the subject so far as established at the present stage. Future work will no doubt add more.
T. Burrow
