connection. He wanders in an intricate maze and the clew of the labyrinth is continually slipping from his hands." Though not very valuable from an artistic point of view, they torn a literary composition, the most curious and the most ingenious the history of literature has ever seen.
II. The Classical Period.
Vhe direct data attesting the posteriority of this period consist in these facts :—
(i) That its opening phases everywhere presuppose the
Vedic period as entirely closed ; (ii) That its oldest portions are regularly based on the
Vedic literature;
.(iii) That the relations of life have now all arrived at a stage of development of which in the first period we can only trace the germs and the beginning.
The distinction between the periods is also by changes in language and subject matter.
" Fwsi, as regards language:—
1. The special characteristics in the second period are so significant, that it appropriately furnishes the name for the. period, whereas the Vedic period receives its designation from, the works composing it.
2. Among the various dialects of the different Indo-aryau tribes, a greater unity had been established after their emigration into India, as the natural result of their intermingling j in their new home. The grammatical study of the Vedas fixed
the frame of the language so that the generally recognised •'
Bhasha had arisen* The estrangement of the civic language \ing but one uninterrupted chain of short sentences linked together in a most concise form, "Even the apparent simplicity" says Colebrooke, " vanishes in the perplexity of structure. The endless pursuit of exceptions and limitations so disjoins the general precepts, that the reader cannot keep in view their intended