y call a "dead language"
being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived,
even as a "dead" tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of
immutable cyclic laws; and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost
to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have
the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back--that of a
universal language. The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will
be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its
future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit
will be resting in its periodical pralaya; and the Attic will be
followed later by the Latin of Virgil. Something ought to have
whispered to us that there was also a time--before the original Aryan
settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the
fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred
Sanskrita Bhasha--when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed
subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise
and fall. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was
only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini. Panini,
Katyayana or Patanjali did not create it; it has existed throughout
cycles, and will pass through other cycles still.

Professor Max Miller is willing to admit that a tribe of Semitic
nomads--fourteen centuries before the year 1 of the Westerns--knew well
the art of writing, and had their historically and scientifically proven
"book of the covenant and the tables 'with the writing of God upon
them.'" Yet the same authority tells us that the Aryans could neither
read nor write until the very close of the Brahmanic period. "No trace
of writing can be discovered (by the philologists) in the Brahmanical
literature before the days of Panini." Very well, and now what was the
period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished?
One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient
ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of
the second century of the Christian era! Only, after fixing Panini's
period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other
calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the
Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a
dilemma. For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could
not have been illiterate; for fir