Blavatsky H.P. - Was Writing Known Before Pânini?: Difference between revisions

And now we may turn to the Pelasgians. Notwithstanding Niebuhr’s rebuke who, speaking of the historian in general, shows him as hating “the spurious philology, out of which the pretences to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people arise,” the origin of the Pelasgians is speculated upon to have been either that of swarthy Asiatics (Pell-asici) or from some mariners—from the Greek Pelagos, the sea; or again to be sought for in the Biblical Peleg! The only divinity of their Pantheon known well to Western History is Orpheus, also the “swarthy,” the “dark-skinned”; represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their “Divine Image.” Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have been either Turanians or Semites, or—Aryans. That they could not be the former, and must have been the last-named, is shown on Herodotus’ testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks—though they spoke, as he says, “a most barbarous language.” Further, unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities. But then how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages? The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues? We who place the origin of the Pelasgi far beyond the Biblical ditch of historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the “barbarous language” mentioned by Herodotus was simply “the primitive and now extinct Aryan tongue” that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit. Who could they be, these Pelasgians? They are described generally on the meagre data in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people, chiefly occupied with agriculture; warlike when necessary, though preferring peace. We are told that they built canals, subterranean water-works, dams, and walls of astounding strength and most excellent construction. And their religion and worship originally consisted in a mystic service of those natural powers—the sun, wind, water, and air {{Page aside|302}} (our Soorya, Maruts, Varuna and Vayu), whose influence is visible in the growth of the fruits of the earth, moreover, some of their tribes were ruled by priests, while others stood under the patriarchal rule of the head of the clan or family. All this reminds one of the nomads, the Brahmanic Aryas of old under the sway of their Rishis, to whom were subject every distinct family or clan. While the Pelasgians were acquainted with the art of writing, and had thus “a vast element of culture in their possession before the dawn of history,” we are told (by the same philologists) that our ancestors knew of no writing until the dawn of Christianity!

Thus the Pelasgianic language, that “most barbarous language” spoken by this mysterious people, what was it but Aryan: or rather, which of the Aryan languages could it have been? Certainly it must have been a language with the same and even stronger Sanskrit roots in it than the Greek. Let us bear in mind that the Aeolic was neither the language of Æschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer. As the Oscan of the “barbarous” Sabines was not quite the Italian of Dante nor even the Latin of Virgil. Or has the Indo-Aryan to come to the sad conclusion that the average Western Orientalist will rather incur the blame of ignorance when detected than admit the antiquity of the Vedic Sanskrit, and the immense period that must have elapsed between this comparatively rough and unpolished tongue when compared with the classical Sanskrit—and the palmy days of the “extinct Aryan tongue”? The Latium Antiquum of Pliny, and the Aeolic of the Autochtones of Greece present the greatest kinship, we are told. They had a common ancestor; the Pelasgian. What then, the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language “spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe—before their separation”? In the absence of all proofs to the contrary, it might have been expected that the Rig-Brahmanas, the Mahâbharata and every Nirukta should not be treated as flippantly as they now are. It is admitted that however inferior to the classical Sanskrit of Pânini—the language of the oldest portions {{Page aside|303}} of Rig-Veda, nothwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees—cannot fail to see and to know—that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of perfection and its cycles of degeneration. And, if one had any intuition, he might have seen that what they 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 thousand upon thousand 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 Æschylus (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 marred the purity of the sacred Sanskrita Bhashya among Dravidian and other aborigines admitted within the fold of Brahmanical initiation—when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed subsequent purity and therefore must have had more than once its rises and its falls. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was only restored, if in some things perfected by Pânini. Neither Pânini, Katyayana or Patañjali created it; it has existed throughout cycles and will pass through other cycles still.