Under correction, I venture to assume that Panini, who was ranked among the Rishis, was the greatest known grammarian in India, than whom there is no higher in history, whether ancient or modern; further, that contemporary scholars agree that the Sanskrit is the most perfect of languages.  Therefore, when Prof.  Muller affirms that “there is not a single word in Panini’s terminology which presupposes the existence of writing” (op. cit. 507), we become a little shaken in our loyal deference to Western opinion.  For it is very hard to conceive how one so pre-eminently great as Panini should have been incapable of inventing characters to preserve his grammatical system—­supposing that none had previously existed—­if his genius was equal to the invention of classical Sanskrit.  The mention of the word Grantha, the equivalent for a written or bound book in the later literature of India—­though applied by Panini (in B. I. 3, 75) to the Veda; (in B. iv. 3, 87) to any work; (in B. iv. 3, 116) to the work of any individual author; and (in B. iv. 3, 79) to any work that is studied, do not stagger Prof.  Muller at all.  Grantha he takes to mean simply a composition, and this may be handed down to posterity by oral communication.  Hence, we must believe that Panini was illiterate; but yet composed the most elaborate and scientific system of grammar ever known; recorded its 3,996 rules only upon the molecular quicksands of his “cerebral cineritious matter,” and handed them over to his disciples by atmospheric vibration, i.e., oral teaching!  Of course, nothing could be clearer; it commends itself to the simplest intellect as a thing most probable!  And in the presence of such a perfect hypothesis, it seems a pity that its author should (op. cit. 523) confess that “it is possible” that he “may have overlooked some words in the Brahmanas and Sutras, which would prove the existence of written books previous to Panini.”  That looks like the military strategy of our old warriors, who delivered their attack boldly, but nevertheless tried to keep their rear open for retreat if compelled.  The precaution was necessary:  written books did exist many centuries before the age in which this radiant sun of Aryan thought rose to shine upon his age.  They existed, but the Orientalist may search in vain for the proof amid the exoteric words in our earlier literature.  As the Egyptian hierophants had their private code of hieratic symbols, and even the founder of Christianity spoke to the vulgar in parables whose mystical meaning was known only to the chosen few, so the Brahmans had from the first (and still have) a mystical terminology couched behind ordinary expressions, arranged in certain sequences and mutual relations, which none but the initiate would observe.  That few living Brahmans possess this key but proves that, as in other archaic religious and philosophical systems, the soul of Hinduism has fled (to its primal imparters—­the initiates), and only the decrepit body remains with a spiritually degenerate posterity.*