ii präkyta). Speech was to them a divine thing; it was the force that impelled the arrow of Rudra, it was the immortal vitality that sustained the gods, and all that is good and auspicious in them was contained in speech (bhadraiņām lakşmir nihitadhi vāci). They also knew that speech is like a river (Sarasvati) flowing, meandering, fertilising and sustaining. It was the chaste speech that obtained ambrosia or Sõmu for the gods and it was the unchaste speech that brought defeat to the Asuras inspite of their seniority and superiority. The Second lecture deals with the earlier stages through which the language had passed before it took shape as Early Vedic. In this pre-bistory also there had been four stages; Proto-Indo-Aryan (we may also call it, less precisely, Pre-Sanskrit), Indo+ Iranian (or Aryan), Indo-European, and Indo- Hittite. I have also given some account of the morphology of Hittite and for two reasons. It has not yet been taken up for study by linguistic scholars and students in India. This is one reason. The other is that inspite of the remoteness of connexion between Hittite and Sanskrit a comparative study of the two languages is bound to be interesting in view of the fact that Sanskrit (and Aryan) has preserved some features that are attested only in Hittite. I have mentioned Heteroclisis. Another good instance is the imperative ending -tu (as well as entu). As these endings occur only in Indo-Iranian it was formerly thought that they are Aryan innovations. But after the discovery of Hittite their remote antiquity has been admitted.
