books and periodicals shall be used, besides the Bible, as set The list preforth the truth contained in the Confessions.

scribed includes only a Lutheran primer and two Lutheran papers, Luther's small catechism, Dietrich's catechism, "Bible Narratives," by Weiskotten, and the Church Hymn-book. Certainly there is nothing in these to corrupt the Lutheranism of the children, if there is not much to attract them.

What is to be the end or stopping-place of this advancing school of thought? If it shall continue to grow in rigidness, will it not at last break in pieces? It has already excluded all Lutherans who are not of its own type; will it not begin to exclude those of its own ranks who may not be able to move on in theology as rapidly as its leaders? The policy of isolation must, sooner or later, break down utterly. The people will come in contact with American ideas and institutions, and refuse to follow in blind ignorance and prejudice their prelatical pastors; and the type of Lutheranism represented by the Missourians will, in time perhaps, be obliterated.

I have left myself no space to consider many other interesting phases and features of Lutheranism-its ritual and diversities in forms of worship; its system of church government; its educational institutions and periodical press; its missionary and benevolent work; the recent attempt to bring the general bodies closer together in a colloquium or diet, etc. But I will not close this article without calling attention to what has been done, under difficult circumstances, to provide for the Church and its adherents colleges, seminaries, asylums, and periodicals. For higher education, there are sixteen colleges, two of which are called universities; twenty-eight academies; fifteen seminaries for young ladies; eighteen theological seminaries,* with

*Says Dr. M. Valentine, in a paper read before the First Free Lutheran Diet: These "schools represent and foster at least half a dozen types of what is claimed to be Lutheran theology; and varieties of these are shaded out, in some places, into minuter diversities. Even within the schools connected with the same general Lutheran organization divergences occur. The carrying on of our theological education in so many institutions, which are led, by their rivalries and jealousies, to magnify their typical differences, and overlook the points of their agreements, emphasizing all the diverse peculiarities on which partisanship feeds and grows, training, it may be, and inspiring skilled polemics rather than earnest servants of Christ and his truth, and sending them forth prepared to misconceive and misinterpret, but not to trust and love one another-this is something, it seems to me, that requires us to put a clear seal of condemnation upon this policy."-P. 159.

532 students; and nineteen orphan asylums, besides six hospitals and infirmaries. How many orphan asylums and hospitals has the Methodist Episcopal Church provided? Is not such a record as this a shame to us? Of periodical publications there is a formidable list. In the English there are thirty-six weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies, and annuals; in the German thirty-eight; in the Norwegian fourteen; in the Swedish six; and four in the Danish.

ART. III.-A GLANCE AT THE LITERATURE OF SANSKRIT.

*

In a former article we saw how the discovery of Sanskrit led to the classification of speech and the foundation of a scientific philology. We propose in the present paper to inquire a little further into its character and history, and particularly to glance at the principal monuments of its remarkable literature.

Probably the most of us are in the habit of thinking and speaking of Sanskrit as the oldest known language of Japhetic stock and connection. This is of course not true in the sense that it is of earlier development or origin: that is, that it evolved its characteristic and individual type as the language of a distinct people before the beginnings of the other IndoEuropean languages and tribes. We have already seen that the various Japhetic idioms owe the fact of being now so distinct and unlike to no other cause than the ancient separation of their respective clans or tribes of speakers, all of whoi used, previous to this separation, substantially the same tongue. There is no evidence that the Aryan tribe, a part of which eventually found its way into India and developed the race and tongue called Sanskrit, was the earliest, or even one of the earliest, to part from the parent community; it may, indeed, have been the very last. Nor is there evidence that this people was the first to reach ideas worthy to found a literature. Yet is Sanskrit entitled to the epithet of "“oldest" because it has preserved the earliest monuments of the IndoEuropean mind; also, because it was the first of its known

*In the issue for October, 1881.

sisterhood of speech to finish its career and become extinct. It is, therefore, only on this basis of classification that we have the right to mention the Zend (or Old Persian) after Sanskrit, as we usually do, and the Greek as third, in our enumeration of these languages.

Doubtless many of us, moreover, associate the Sanskrit with the Hebrew as the two old languages of the world. We remember that neither has been a spoken language for more than two thousand years, and that both have so abundantly survived the idioms of their day simply because they contain the scriptures of an ancient religion. This chance parallelism can be extended, if we will, a little further. They alone of all dead languages have continued to change and be changed, almost to grow, since their decease. It is supposed with truth that nothing can be more unalterable than a dead language. It would be utterly impossible to reform, for instance, the inflections of Latin, while copies of its authors are in everybody's hands. Yet if this had been attempted a thousand years ago by the authority of the Church, which then had exclusive possession of the manuscripts of Latin literature and sole charge of Latin instruction, it could perhaps have been accomplished. The amended idiom could have been both learned and taught as easily as true Latin, there being no natural life in either (or, rather,. there being no such thing as usage, but only authority;) and the alteration of the manuscripts would not have been difficult. Something like this actually happened to Sanskrit and Hebrew after they ceased to be used as vernacular languages. They were still read, and in an artificial way spoken and written, much as the mediæval monks and prelates spoke and wrote Latin; but, perhaps from their being, unlike Latin, comparatively crude and unpolished idioms, they began to receive improvement. Exactly how much change was made, and in what way it was accomplished, it is difficult to determine: the Hebrew certainly received far less amendment than the Sanskrit. The Hebrew still continues to be called by the name of the race which spoke it; but Sanskrit (" elaborated" or "perfected") is a late invention, and was not applied as a designation of the language until the process of its remaking was so nearly accomplished that the pundits were ready to signalize their success. Therefore the

name Sanskrit, properly speaking, belongs, not to the whole literature, but only to its latest or classic portion, and to the latest or modern type of the language.

The whole body of Sanskrit literature is divided into three parts. The earliest or Vedic portion is as far removed from the classic type as the epic of Homer from Attic Greek. There is a like exuberance of vocabulary and unsteadiness in grammatical treatment, as compared with the later language. After the poems of the Veda had come to be looked upon as sacred, there began an age of devout study and commentation. Thus arose a vast body, so to speak, of "Fathers," the earliest and almost the only Sanskrit prose, written in a language more modern than the Vedic, yet not far removed from it. The literature of this second period, intermediate between the Vedic and the classical, is called Brahmana. The rise of the so-called classical literature is involved in much obscurity, and was doubtless the outgrowth of many circumstances. The chief occasion, we may be reasonably sure, was the beginning of that scientific study of grammar in which the Brahmins eventually attained such eminence. By this time Sanskrit had entered upon its stage of decay as a vernacular tongue. Only the priestly caste adhered to it; the lower classes spoke Prakrit, a simpler and ruder idiom. Thus were the learned Brahmins enabled to reform and remold the sacred language according to their pleasure. They pruned away corrupt accretions, eliminated irregularities of inflection and structure, and in grammatical treatises of great subtlety formulated the rules and principles which should govern future usage. This work of reform and renovation ends with the grammarian Panini, who lived, perhaps, in the third century before our era. The principal changes that have been made in Sanskrit since his day have been wrought in the literature, which has been brought into general conformity with his rules and standards.

Of the literature proper we will examine first the extensive maze of the classical period. Its richness is bewildering. There is poetry of every kind; there are works on law, scientific treatises-almost every department is full. We will follow the recognized order of development in other literatures, and inquire first for epic products. The chief is called the MahaBhārata, and is almost a whole library in itself. It is, in fact,

not a consistent production like the "Iliad," devoted to a single theme. It may have been such in its first plan and execution; for this is one of those works which have come down from an earlier age and been thoroughly revised, one may say rewritten, in order to conform to the changes in the later grammar of Sanskrit. Not only has it suffered changes in grammar and style, but it has been thoroughly recast, distortod, and distended beyond all reason. Into it have been embodied many heterogeneous elements which have little to do with the main purpose of the poem. This appears to have been, judging it as we find it, to mass together under one title all the epic legends in the language. The Maha-Bhārata ("Great War of the Bharatas ") is the original legend, which has received the others and given its name to the whole collection. The incongruous additions are mostly moral tractates, inserted here and there at random for the edification of the warrior caste, for whose eye the poem, as a whole, appears to have been especially intended. One of the most important of these didactic episodes is the philosophical poem of the Bhagavad-gītā. This is undoubtedly of comparatively modern authorship, and though of eighteen chapters extent, is inserted like an ordinary interpolation at the twenty-fifth chapter of Bhishma-parva, the sixth book of the poem. The name signifies the mystic doctrine proclaimed by Bhagavat, or Krishna. It is a dialogue between the hero Arjuna and the god Krishna, who is serving as his charioteer. It ranks among the most famous of the episodes, as embodying the principles of the Vedānta, or pantheistic philosophy of the Hindus, the most important of their systems. With true Hindu disregard of concinnity and con-sistency, it likewise admits certain principles of other philosophical systems, the Sankhya (atheistic) and the Yoga, (monotheistic,) equally at variance with the Vedanta and with each other. The Yoga doctrine bears resemblance in certain points to Christian theology, (as will be observed hereafter when we come to the department of philosophy,) and is by some conjectured to have been borrowed from that source.

Another very famous but very different episode of the MahāBhārata, found inserted in the Vana-parva or third book, is the legend of Nala. It is more in keeping with the epic character of the poem than the preceding, though it is really a FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXIV.-30