The Times of Tuesday published a notable paper describing the
great progress made by Sanskrit literature in India. The libraries of India have been searched, and ten thousand separate works in Sanskrit manuscript are now known. to exist. Some of these are constantly being re-edited, usually at the expense of Government or of native Princes, while one gentleman, Mr. Apte, of Bombay, is devoting his large fortune to a College for Sanskrit students, who will also be editors of works in Sanskrit. Modern works, too, arc appearing in the ancient tongue, the Pundits preferring, even when they write poetry, to use a vehicle intelligible to all the learned Hindoos throughout the peninsula. One such poem, "The Triumph of Vasudeva," has even reached a second edition. Much of this interest in the early literature is due to patriotic pride, and some of it probably to that revival of Hindoo religious feeling which has accompanied the British conquest. The great obstacle in the way of a general diffusion of Sanskrit knowledge is the great difficulty of learning a tongue which the priests had elaborated into too complex an instrument for speech. The easiest method even now, we fancy, is to acquire one of the tongues still spoken which, though not Sanskrit in the literary sense, are as closely allied to it as Italian is to Latin.
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