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"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).