Nalopákhyánam : Story of Nala / an episode of the Mahábhárata: the Sanskrit text, with a copious vocabulary, grammatical analysis, and introduction by Monier Williams. The metrical translation by the Very Reverend Henry Hart Milman.

Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nalopákhyánam : Story of Nala / an episode of the Mahábhárata: the Sanskrit text, with a copious vocabulary, grammatical analysis, and introduction by Monier Williams. The metrical translation by the Very Reverend Henry Hart Milman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    suited in printing Sanskrit as in every other language. Why are we to combine words in one immense whole, merely because assimilation takes place l^etween final and initial letters? Unlike the ancient Brdhmans, we have other work for our eyes besides Sanskrit, and liave a right to expect that our overtasked vision shall be in¬ dulged by the spacing of words in this language as much as in Latin or Greek. But, it is said, the native Pandits and good European scholars find no difficulty in reading sentences thus united. I answer, this is not a question of difficulty, but of time. We live in an age of competition, when the gain of a few minutes ma}'^ make all the differ¬ ence between success and failure. Education now is a race of eyes; and he comes in the winner, whose vision can take in the meaning of a given quantity of printed matter in the shortest space of time. What would a Greek or Latin scholar think of a book placed before liim, in which all the antiquated contractions were perpe¬ tuated, while the spacing of words and sentences, and even punctuation was neglected ? And why are English scholars to be expected to treat Sanskrit with greater respect than they treat Latin or Greek? What special inviohibility does this language enjoy, that all typographical improvements and devices for its simplification are to be repudiated as unscholarlike ? Why should we be debarred from writing the first four words in the sixth verse of the Nala thus,— Tam ahhyagachchliad brahmarshir damano, rather than after the native fashion, Tamabhyagachchhadbrahmarshirdamanof But we are told that we have no right to employ the virdma for the division of words, but only as a mark of the stoppage or cessation of a series of syllables euphoiiically combined, denoting, like a mark of punctuation, a pause in the voice. Now it is well shown by Professor M. Mil Her that, strictly, the virdma is no mark at all. The terms sandhi and virdma were originally used when Sanskrit was uii- ' b a