"A Sanskrit Grammar, including both the Classical Language, and the Older Dialects, of Veda and Brahmana" is a seminal work by William Dwight Whitney. This comprehensive grammar book covers both classical Sanskrit and the older Vedic dialects, providing detailed explanations of phonology, morphology, and syntax. It serves as an essential resource for students and scholars of Sanskrit, offering insights into the language's historical development and its classical and religious texts. Whitney's rigorous approach ensures clarity and depth in understanding Sanskrit grammar.

William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894) was a prominent American linguist and philologist, renowned for his work in Sanskrit, linguistic theory, and lexicography. A professor at Yale University, he authored significant works including "A Compendious German and English Dictionary," influencing modern linguistics and language education.

It was in June, 1875, as I chanced to be for a day or two in Leipzig, that I was unexpectedly invited to prepare the Sanskrit grammar for the Indo-European series projected by Messrs. Breitkopf and Hartel. After some consideration, and consultation with friends, I accepted the task, and have since devoted to it what time could be spared from regular duties, after the satisfaction of engagements earlier formed. If the delay seems a long one, it was nevertheless unavoidable: and I would gladly, in the interest of the work itself. have made it still longer. In every such case, it is necessary to make a compromise between measurably satisfying a present pressing need, and doing the subject fuller justice at the cost of more time: and it seemed as if the call for a Sanskrit grammar on a somewhat different plan from those already in use excellent as some of these in many respects are was urgent enough to recommend a speedy completion of the work begun. The objects had especially in view in the preparation of this grammar have been the following:

To make a presentation of the facts of the language primarily as they show themselves in use in the literature, and only secondarily as they are laid down by the native grammarians. The earliest European grammars were by the necessity of the case chiefly founded on their native predecessors; and a traditional method was thus established which has been perhaps somewhat too closely adhered to, at the expense of clearness and of proportion, as well as of scientific truth. Accordingly, my attention has not been directed toward a profounder study of the grammatical science of the Hindu schools: their teachings I have been contented to take as already reported to Western learners in the existing Western grammars.

To include also in the presentation the forms and constructions of the older language, as exhibited in the Veda and the Brahmana. Grassmann's excellent Index-Vocabulary to the Rig-Veda, and my own manuscript one to the Atharva-Veda (which I hope soon to be able to make public), gave me in full detail the great mass of Vedic material; and this, with some assistance from pupils and friends, I have sought to complete, as far as the circumstances permitted, from the other Vedic texts and from the various works of the Brahmana period, both printed and manuscript.

To treat the language throughout as an accented one. omitting nothing of what is known respecting the nature of the Sanskrit accent, its changes in combination and inflection. and the tone of individual words being, in all this. necessarily dependent especially upon the material presented by the older accentuated texts.

To cast all statements, classifications, and so on, into a form consistent with the teachings of linguistic science. In doing this, it has been necessary to discard a few of the long-used and familiar divisions and terms of Sanskrit gram-mar for example, the classification and nomenclature of "special tenses" and "general tenses which is so indefensible that one can only wonder at its having maintained itself so long, the order and terminology of the conjugation-classes, the separation in treatment of the facts of internal and ex-ternal euphonic combination, and the like. But care has been taken to facilitate the transition from the old to the new: and the changes, it is believed, will commend themselves to unqualified acceptance. It has been sought also to help an appreciation of the character of the language by putting its facts as far as possible into a statistical form. In this respect the native grammar is especially deficient and misleading.

It seems desirable to give here such a sketch of the history of Indian literature as shall show the relation to one another of the different periods and forms of the language treated in the following grammar. and the position of the works there quoted.

The name "Sanskrit" (samskyta, 1087 d. adorned, elaborated, perfected'), which is popularly applied to the whole ancient and sacred language of India, belongs more properly only to that dialect which, regulated and established by the labors of the native grammarians, has led for the last two thousand years or more an artificial life, like that of the Latin during most of the same period in Europe, as the written and spoken means of communication of the learned and priestly caste; and which even at the present day fills that office. It is thus distinguished, on the one hand, from the later and derived dialects - as the Prakrit, forms of language which have datable monuments from as early as the third century before Christ, and which are represented by inscriptions and coins, by the speech of the uneducated characters in the Sanskrit dramas (see below), and by a limited literature; the Pali, a Prakritic dialect which became the sacred language of Buddhism in Farther India, and is still in service there as such; and yet later and more altered tongues forming the transition to the languages of Modern India. And, on the other hand, it is distinguished, but very much less sharply and widely, from the older dialects or forms of speech presented in the canonical literature, the Veda and Brahmana.

This fact, of the fixation by learned treatment of an authorized mode of expression, which should thenceforth be used according to rule in the intercourse of the educated, is the cardinal one in Indian linguistic history; and as the native grammatical literature has determined the form of the language, so it has also to a large extent determined the grammatical treatment of the language by European scholars.

Much in the history of the learned movement is still obscure, and opinions are at variance even as to points of prime consequence. Only the concluding works in the development of the grammatical science have been preserved to us; and though they are evidently the perfected fruits of a long series of learned labors, the records of the latter are lost beyond recovery. The time and the place of the creation of Sanskrit are unknown; and as to its occasion, we have only our inferences and conjectures to rely upon. It seems, however, altogether likely that the grammatical sense of the ancient Hindus was awakened in great measure by their study of the traditional sacred texts, and by their com-parison of its different language with that of contemporary use. It is certain that the grammatical study of those texts (cakhas, litly 'branches', phonetic and other, was zealously and effectively followed in the Brahmanic schools; this is attested by our possession of a number of phonetic grammatical treatises, praticakhyas (prati cakham, 'belonging to each several text', one having for subject each principal Vedic text, and noting all its peculiarities of form; these, both by the depth and exactness of their own researches and by the number of authorities which they quote, speak plainly of a lively scientific activity continued during a long time.