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T. Burrow, “Sanskrit Language”

Review

A very friendly introduction to general Sanskrit themes for those with prior IE experience

In the middle third of the 20th century, Faber and Faber published a splendid series called "The Great Languages" which were a rigorous but entertaining introduction to a number of languages from a diachronic perspective. Regrettably, the books were rarely distributed on the other side of the Atlantic, and fell swiftly out of print. T. Burrow's THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE is a splendid example of the strengths of this series, and while initially published in 1955, it saw a second edition in 1965 and then a major revised third edition in 1973. We are fortunate indeed that Motilal Banarsidass has restored it to print.

T. Burrow's description of the world of Sanskrit assumes some prior familiarity with comparative Indo-European linguistics, and some Greek and Latin is essential. The first several chapters do go over the basics of IE linguistics, but this is useful not as an introduction to the field, but more so that one can see what theoretical background Burrow works with. The major update in the third edition is that laryngeal theory and the lessons of Hittite and Mycenaean Greek are now taken into account throughout, which makes this a very contemporary-sounding book in spite of its publication several decades ago.

While the grammar of Sanskrit is covered exhaustively, it is not presented as an endless series of declension and conjugation tables meant for memorization. Instead, Burrow's book fills the void of an introduction to Sanskrit for IE linguists who want to know what it's like in general without really learning it to reading proficiency at the moment. But the book complements Sanskrit primers quite well, for out of the many Sanskrit textbooks I've encountered, Burrow's dedicates the most space by far to noun formation--exactly 100 pages. And the final chapter, "Loanwords in Sanskrit" is most relevatory, covering not only the well-known adoption of Dravidian lexical stock, but also late Bactrian Greek borrowings.

If you are a student of Indo-European linguistics interested in Sanskrit, Burrow's book is certainly worth tracking down. I very much enjoyed a presentation of diachronic grammar that is rigorous but at the same time doesn't assume the reader will memorize it all.

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Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123