PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The present grammar, which is chiefly intended for beginners, is believed to contain all the information that a student of Sanskrit is likely to want during the first two or three years of his reading. Rules referring to the language of the Vedas have been entirely excluded, for it is not desirable that the difficulties of that ancient dialect should be approached by any one who has not fully mastered the grammar of the ordinary Sanskrit such as it was fixed by Pâṇini and his successors. All allusions to cognate forms in Greek, Latin, or Gothic, have likewise been suppressed, because, however interesting and useful to the advanced student, they are apt to deprive the beginner of that clear and firm grasp of the grammatical system peculiar to the language of ancient India, which alone can form a solid foundation for the study both of Sanskrit and of Comparative Philology.
The two principal objects which I have kept in view while composing this grammar, have been clearness and correctness. With regard to clearness, my chief model has been the grammar of Bopp; with regard to correctness, the grammar of Colebrooke. If I may hope, without presumption, to have simplified a few of the intricacies of Sanskrit grammar which were but partially cleared up by Bopp, Benfey, Flecchia, and others, I can hardly flatter myself to have reached, with regard to correctness, the high standard of Colebrooke's great, though unfinished work. I can only say in self-defence, that it is far more difficult to be correct on every minute point, if one endea- vours to re-arrange, as I have done, the materials collected by Pâṇini, and to adapt them to the grammatical system current in Europe, than if one follows so closely as Colebrooke, the system of native grammarians, and adopts nearly the whole of their technical terminology. The grammatical system elaborated by native grammarians is, if itself, most perfect; and those who have tested Pâṇini's work, will readily admit that there is no grammar in any language that
a 2
