India was great; that they penetrated far into the interior; and that the conquests of its kings in that country were more extensive than those of Alexander himself. From the researches of M. de Guignes into the Chinese historians, it farther appears, that this kingdom of Bactriana subsisted nearly one hundred and thirty years, when it was overwhelmed by a horde of Tartars about one hundred and twenty-six years before the Christian

æra.

If these facts be duly weighed, the conjecture of Meiners will not perhaps appear extravagant, that it was in consequence of this intercourse between Greece and India, arising from Alexander's conquests, that the Bramins were led to invent their sacred language.* "For unless," he observes, "they had chosen to adopt at once a foreign tongue," against which obvious and insurmountable objections must have presented themselves, “it was necessary for them to invent a new language, by means of which they might express their newly acquired ideas, and, at the same time, conceal from the other Indian castes their philosophical doctrines, when they were at variance with the commonly received opinions." I cannot, however, agree with Meiners, in thinking that this task would be so arduous

*Meiners is not the only writer who has suspected the Sanscrit to be an invention of the Indian priesthood. Colonel Dow, in his "Dissertation concerning the Customs, Manners, Language, Religion, and Philosophy of the Hindoos," is the first English writer who has expressed this opinion with confidence.. "Whether the Shanscrita," he observes, "was in any period of antiquity the vulgar language of Hindostan, or was invented by the Brahmans to be a mysterious repository for their religion and philosophy, is difficult to determine. All other languages, it is true, were casually invented by mankind to express their ideas and wants; but the astonishing formation of the Shanscrita seems to be beyond the power of chance. In regularity of etymology and grammatical order, it far exceeds the Arabic. It, in short, bears evident marks that it has been fixed upon rational principles, by a body of learned men, who studied regularity, harmony, and a wonderful simplicity and energy of expression.

"Though the Shanscrita is amazingly copious, a very small grammar and vocabulary serve to illustrate the principles of the whole. In a treatise of a few pages, the roots and primitives are all comprehended, and so uniform are the rules for deriva-. tions and inflections, that the etymon of any word is with facility at once investigated. The pronunciation is the greatest difficulty that attends the acquirement of the language to perfection. This is so quick and forcible, that a person, even before the years of puberty, must labor a long time before he can pronounce it with propriety; but when once the pronunciation is attained to perfection, it strikes the ear with amazing boldness and harmony."-Page 30 of the Dissertation prefixed to the History of Hindostan from the Earliest Accounts of Time to the Death of Akbar. Translated from the Persian of Ferishta. London, 1767.

as to require the labor of many successive generations,* for with the Greek language before them as a model, and their own language as their principal raw material, where would be the difficulty of manufacturing a different idiom, borrowing from the Greek the same, or nearly the same system, in the flexions of nouns and conjugations of verbs, and thus disguising, by new terminations and a new syntax, their native dialect? If Psalmanazar was able to create, without any assistance, a language, of which not a single word had a previous existence but in his own fancy, it does not seem a very bold hypothesis, that an order of men, amply supplied with a stock of words applicable to all matters connected with the common business of life, might, without much expense of time and ingenuity, bring to a systematic perfection an artificial language of their own, having for their guide the richest and most regular tongue that was ever spoken on earth;-a tongue, too, abounding in whatever abstract and technical words their vernacular speech was incompetent to furnish.

Something not altogether unlike this seems to have taken place in the Roman Catholic monasteries, in which a smattering of Latin, (the language of the church,) formed a necessary part of the education of a priest; and in which it may, without any breach of charity, be presumed, that the clergy found it occasionally convenient to conceal their conversations with each other

* I shall transcribe as much from Meiners as will be sufficient to give a general idea of his views on this subject; premising only, that, in transcribing the first paragraph, which is here introduced merely for the sake of connexion, I would not be understood to give any countenance to the author's conjecture about the individual (Budda or Butta) whom he supposes to have been instrumental in incorporating the Greek philosophy with the Indian superstitions.

"Hic Butta sive Budda vel omnium primus, vel inter primos saltem fuisse videtur, qui Græcorum placita cum antiquis Brachmanum superstitionibus et vivendi ratione copulaverit.

Huic meæ conjecturæ alteram adjicio, ex hujus nempe aliorumque virorum, qui eâdem fere tempestate ad externa studia sese applicuerunt, institutionibus, ingentes sine dubio discipulorum catervas prodiisse, quorum operâ et junctis viribus præclara illa et toties laudata antiqua Brachmanum lingua inventa sit. Nisi enim semper peregrino sermone uti volebant, de novâ ipsis linguâ cogitandum erat, quà novas res, atque incognitas hactenus notiones exprimere, simulque doctrinas suas cum patriâ religione pugnantes cæteros Indorum ordines celare poterant. Ejusmodi vero lingua inventio adeo arduum atque difficile negotium esse mihi videtur, ut illud non nisi multis hominum ætatibus perfici potuisse existimem."Meiners, His-. toria Doctrina de Vero Deo, Lemgoviæ, 1780, pp. 134, 135.

from their lay domestics. I have more than once been astonished to observe, in the Flemish and French abbeys before the French Revolution, the ease and fluency with which the Monks, who were in general the most ignorant and illiterate of men, expressed themselves in a sort of barbarous Latin, on many petty details of ordinary life, that would have imposed silence on Parr or Porson. This sort of dialect was proverbially known among the Scotch and English Ecclesiastics, established in Catholic countries, by the significant name of Kitchen-Latin, a phrase which they probably borrowed from the Germans.* They who have read the Polemo-Middinia of Drummond, a medley of Latin and Scotch, where it is pushed to the length of ludicrous extravagance, may form a general idea of the species of Latinity to which I allude.

"Coal-heughes nigri girnantes more Divelli." +

The following paragraph is extracted from Dr. Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language, Art. Dog-Latin.

"Lord Hailes, speaking of Kennedy's Testament, says, 'The alternate lines are composed of shreds of the breviary, mixed with what we call Dog-Latin, and the French Latin de Cuisine.' This in German is denominated Kuchen-Latein, which Wachter renders Kitchen-Latin; qu. that used by cooks." I should rather be inclined to conjecture, the Latin used in the Refectory. In that social scene of monastic indulgence it may not unreasonably be supposed that the table-talk of the monks turned frequently on the specimens before them of their cook's skill in the culinary art; on which occasions they would find it absolutely necessary to supply the poverty of classical Latinity by Latinized terms borrowed from their vernacular tongues. Hence, I think a satisfactory account of the origin of the phrase KitchenLatin, which by an easy and natural transition, would gradually be extended to all the other colloquial barbarisms which took their rise from the peculiarities of modern

manners.

To the barbarous, or slip-slop Latin used by the monks, there is a pointed allusion in Buchanan's Satire, entitled Franciscanus. Addressing himself to a young novice, whom he supposes recently admitted into the order, he gives him some counsels with respect to the conduct of his studies.

Turpe est grammaticis submittere colla capistris."

Buchanani Opera, Tomus II. p. 273. Lugduni Batavorum, 1725.

The Latin style of the monkish historians in the fifteenth century was somewhat of the same description. "Thus William of Worcester tells us, that the Duke of York returned from Ireland, et arrivavit apud Redbanke, prope Cestriam," (and arrived at Redbank, near Chester;) and John Rous, the antiquarian of Warwick, says, "That Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, son of Queen Elizabeth, widow of Edward IV., and Sir Thomas Grey, her brother, were obliged to fly, quod ipsi contravissent mortem Ducis Protectoris Anglia," (because they had contrived the death of the Duke Protector of England.)-Henry's History, Vol. X. p. 118. Dr.

But although a very moderate degree of industry might have been sufficient to bring this new language to such a degree of perfection as would fit it for the essential purposes which its framers had in view, it was probably the work of successive ages to bestow on it all the improvements of which it was susceptible. It is difficult to conceive how far these improvements might be carried in the unexampled case of a language which was never contaminated by the lips of the vulgar, and which was spoken only by men of contemplative and refined habits, peculiarly addicted to those abstract speculations which are so nearly allied to the study of grammar and philology. It must be recollected, too, how much their labors would be facilitated by the systematical regularity of the model after which the original artists had wrought in its first composition. The accounts which are given by the most competent judges of the progressive improvement of Sanscrit, seem to be highly favorable to the foregoing hypothesis, more particularly in the date which is fixed for the æra of its greatest perfection. "Sanscrit," says Mr. Colebrooke, "is a most polished

Henry mentions these barbarisms as a proof of the decline of learning at this period; but they were probably owing, at least in part, to the habitual use among the ecclesiastics of their Kitchen-Latin as a medium of conversation. Ludicrous as they are, they may have escaped the pen of writers perfectly able to read and to interpret all the Roman Classics known in their times.

The use of Kitchen-Latin in the monasteries naturally gave birth, among the idle inmates, to Macaronic poetry. Its native country, as may be inferred from the name, was Italy, where Folengo, a Mantuan monk of the Benedictine order, (born in 1491) distinguished himself by some publications in this style; in which, amidst much licentiousness, there are said to be many passages, which discover a genius fitted for nobler undertakings.-See Ginguené, Histoire Littéraire d'Italie, Vol. V. p. 533, et seq. The example was soon followed, I believe, in all Catholic countries, particularly in France, (which, among other things of the same kind, produced a Macaronic poem, De Arte Dansandi,) in Germany, and the Netherlands.

The author of the Polemo-Middinia, who had resided long abroad, and whose English imitations of the Italian sonnets, when compared with those of his contemporaries, are, in elegance and tenderness, inferior only to those of Milton, was so much struck with the peculiar humor displayed in these Macaronic compositions, as to make a trial, after his return home, of the effects resulting from such a medley of Latin with broad Scotch, as Folengo and others had exemplified in combining Latin with other modern tongues. The copy of this performance, which is now before me, is appended to the folio edition of his works, printed at Edinburgh in 1711. I understand there is an earlier edition, with Latin notes, by Bishop Gibson, published at Oxford, in 1691. In what year the first edition appeared I cannot at present say, but it must have been in the earlier part of the 17th century, as the author died in 1649.

Since Drummond's time, I have not heard of any similar attempt in Great Britain, excepting those by the late Reverend Alexander Geddes, a learned, though not very orthodox clergyman of the Roman Catholic church.

tongue, which was gradually refined, until it became fixed in the classic writings of many elegant poets, most of whom are supposed to have flourished in the century preceding the Christian æra."*

During the interval between the invasion of Alexander and the period here mentioned, there was ample time for polishing and refining to the utmost this artificial dialect. Nor is it easy to explain why so many classic poets should have appeared so soon after Alexander's invasion, but by the impetus which the minds of the Hindoos had received, and the new lights which they had acquired by their recent intercourse with the Greeks and Persians.t

According to the idea which has now been suggested, we may expect to find Sanscrit as widely diffused as the order of Bramins ; indeed, if there be any foundation for the foregoing conjectures, it was probably in the possession of every Bramin in the course of one or two generations after Alexander's invasion. From the natural curiosity of this order of men, joined to the esprit de corps, Greek may be presumed to have formed a part of their professional education; more especially, as, with a

On the Sanscrit and Pracrit Languages, by H. J. Colebrooke, Esq.-Asiatic Researches, Vol. VII. p. 200.

+ " "The word Sanskrita," we are informed by Mr. Wilkins, in the first page of his Grammar," is a compound participle, literally signifying altogether, or completely made, done, or formed, (Latin, confectus,) from the inseparable preposition sam, altogether, or together, (Latin, col, com, con, cor,) and krita, done, with the interposition of a silent s, which letter being a dental, requires that the labial nasal which precedes it should be pronounced as a dental also, namely as n. The word, in its common acceptation, denotes a thing to have been composed or formed by art, adorned, embellished, purified, highly cultivated or polished, and regularly inflected as a language."

I do not lay much stress on this etymology, which may perhaps be accounted for in some other way, of which I am not aware; but I may be permitted to remark, that, so far as it is allowed any weight, it is rather favorable than otherwise to the foregoing hypothesis.

"Je crois que la base du Malay est monosyllabique; en effet on y trouve un grand nombre de mots d'origine Chinoise; les mots Sanscrits ont été introduits, à mesure que les Malays ont adopté le Brahmanisme."-Langlès, as quoted by Mr. Q. Crawford, in his Researches concerning the Laws, Theology, &c. of Ancient and Modern India, Lond. 1817. Vol. II. p. 206. On the other hand, it is a fact no less remarkable, that a knowledge of the Sanscrit is confined exclusively to those regions where the order of Bramins is to be found. This is admitted in the Edinburg Review by a very learned orientalist. "The Sanscrit, the literary language of India, the guardian of all its ancient knowledge, has never left the sacred spot beyond the precincts of which Bramins are forbidden to travel."-Vol. V. p. 289. How are these two facts to be accounted for, but on the supposition that the Bramins were themselves the authors of their own sacred language?