• "Indian linguistics was not itself historical in orientation, though its roots lay in the changes languages undergo in the course of time. But the topics covered by modern descriptive linguistics: semantics, grammar, phonology, and phonetics, were all treated at length in the Indian tradition; and in phonetics and in certain aspects of grammar, Indian theory and practice was definitely in advance of anything achieved in Europe or elsewhere before contact had been made with Indian work. The stimulation afforded by Sanskritic linguistic scholarship carried by Buddhist monks into China has already been noticed. European scholars realized immediately that they had encountered in India a mass of linguistic literature of the greatest importance and stemming from an independent source, even though their interpretation and full appreciation of it was in part halting and delayed" (Robins 1997:170).