her passage, quoted by Hardy in his Manual of
Buddhism, p. 186, where we read that at the time of Buddha's first
preaching each of the countless listeners thought that the sage was
looking toward him, and was speaking to him in his own tongue, though
the language used was Magadhi.[91]

Sanskrit, therefore, as a language spoken by the people at large, had
ceased to exist in the third century B.C.

Yet such is the marvellous continuity between the past and the present
in India, that in spite of repeated social convulsions, religious
reforms, and foreign invasions, Sanskrit may be said to be still the
only language that is spoken over the whole extent of that vast
country.

Though the Buddhist sovereigns published their edicts in the
vernaculars, public inscriptions and private official documents
continued to be composed in Sanskrit during the last two thousand
years. And though the language of the sacred writings of Buddhists and
_G_ainas was borrowed from the vulgar dialects, the literature of
India never ceased to be written in Pa_n_inean Sanskrit, while the few
exceptions, as, for instance, the use of Prakrit by women and inferior
characters in the plays of Kalidasa and others, are themselves not
without an important historical significance.

Even at the present moment, after a century of English rule and
English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more widely understood in
India than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.

Whenever I receive a letter from a learned man in India, it is written
in Sanskrit. Whenever there is a controversy on questions of law and
religion, the pamphlets published in India are written in Sanskrit.
There are journals written in Sanskrit which must entirely depend for
their support on readers who prefer that classical language to the
vulgar dialects. There is _The Pandit_, published at Benares,
containing not only editions of ancient texts, but treatises on modern
subjects, reviews of books published in England, and controversial
articles, all in Sanskrit.

Another paper of the same kind is the _Pratna-Kamra-nandini_, "the
Delight of lovers of old things," published likewise at Benares, and
full of valuable materials.

There is also the _Vidyodaya_, "the Rise of Knowledge," a Sanskrit
journal published at Calcutta, which sometimes contains important
articles. There are probably others, which I do not know.

There is a monthly serial published at Bombay, by M. Moreshwar Kunte,