avi. The famous "Nine Gems," or
"the nine classics," as we should say, have been referred, at least in
part, to the same age,[109] and I doubt whether we shall be able to
assign a much earlier date to anything we possess of Sanskrit
literature, excepting always the Vedic and Buddhistic writings.

Although the specimens of this modern Sanskrit literature, when they
first became known, served to arouse a general interest, and serve
even now to keep alive a certain superficial sympathy for Indian
literature, more serious students had soon disposed of these
compositions, and while gladly admitting their claim to be called
pretty and attractive, could not think of allowing to Sanskrit
literature a place among the world-literatures, a place by the side of
Greek and Latin, Italian, French, English, or German.

There was indeed a time when people began to imagine that all that was
worth knowing about Indian literature was known, and that the only
ground on which Sanskrit could claim a place among the recognized
branches of learning in a university was its usefulness for the study
of the Science of Language.

At that very time, however, now about forty years ago, a new start was
made, which has given to Sanskrit scholarship an entirely new
character. The chief author of that movement was Burnouf, then
professor at the _College de France_ in Paris, an excellent scholar,
but at the same time a man of wide views and true historical
instincts, and the last man to waste his life on mere Nalas and
_S_akuntalas. Being brought up in the old traditions of the classical
school in France (his father was the author of the well-known Greek
Grammar), then for a time a promising young barrister, with
influential friends such as Guizot, Thiers, Mignet, Villemain, at his
side, and with a brilliant future before him, he was not likely to
spend his life on pretty Sanskrit ditties. What he wanted when he
threw himself on Sanskrit was history, human history, world-history,
and with an unerring grasp he laid hold of Vedic literature and
Buddhist literature, as the two stepping-stones in the slough of
Indian literature. He died young, and has left a few arches only of
the building he wished to rear. But his spirit lived on in his pupils
and his friends, and few would deny that the first impulse, directly
or indirectly, to all that has been accomplished since by the students
of Vedic and Buddhist literature, was given by Burnouf and his
lectures at