All this was anterior to the introduction of the art of writing; but when that art was introduced, it was largely used by the Brahmans for the reproduction of works in the sacred Sanskrit, that is, the purified quintessence and fullest development of the principles of Aryan speech.
But though Sanskrit had, by the labours of Pânini and others, become an historical fact, so that now at length there existed a standard, and purists might condemn, as in fact they did, all departures from it as vulgar errors and corruptions, it is beyond a doubt that the local dialects continued to live on. Sanskrit was not intended for the people; it was not to be endured that the holy language, offspring of the gods, should be defiled by issuing from plebeian lips; it kept its place apart, as the appropriate speech of pure Brahmans and mighty kings. But the local dialects held their own; they were anterior to Sanskrit, contemporary with it, and they finally survived it. Nevertheless, Sanskrit is older than the dialects. This sounds like a paradox, but it is true in two senses: first, that as the ages rolled on the vulgar dialects developed into new forms (“corrupted” is the common way of putting it), whereas Sanskrit remained fixed and fossilized for ever, so that now, if we wish to find the earliest extant form of any Aryan word, we must, in the great majority of instances, look for it not in the writings in the popular dialects which have come down to us, but in Sanskrit; and secondly, that although Pânini lived in an age when the early Aryan dialects had already undergone much change from their pristine condition, yet among the Brahmans for whom alone he laboured there existed a traditional memory of the ancient, and then obsolete, form of many words. They would remember these archaic forms, because their religious and professional duties required them constantly to recite formulæ of great antiquity, and of such sacredness that every letter in them was supposed to be a divinity in itself, and which had consequently been handed down from primeval
