Stated briefly, their position
is that the entire absence of any mention of "writing, reading, paper,
or pen" in the Vedas, or during the whole of the Brahmana period, and
the almost, if not quite, as complete silence as to them throughout the
Sutra period, "lead us to suppose that even then [the Sutra period],
though the art of writing began to be known, the whole literature of
India was preserved by oral tradition only." ("Hist. Sans. Lit.," p.
501.) To support this theory, he expands the mnemonic faculty of our
respected ancestors to such a phenomenal degree that, like the bull's
hide of Queen Dido, it is made to embrace the whole ground needed for
the proposed city of refuge, to which discomfited savants may flee when
hard pressed. Considering that Professor Weber--a gentleman who, we
observe, likes to distil the essence of Aryan aeons down into an attar
of no greater volume than the capacity of the Biblical period--admits
that Europe now possesses 10,000 of our Sanscrit texts; and considering
that we have, or have had, many other tens of thousands which the
parsimony of Karma has hitherto withheld from the museums and libraries
of Europe, what a memory must have been theirs!
Under correction, I venture to assume that Panini, who was ranked among
the Rishis, was the greatest known grammarian in India, than whom there
is no higher in history, whether ancient or modern; further, that
contemporary scholars agree that the Sanskrit is the most perfect of
languages.
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