Discovery of Sanskrit by Europeans

Abstract

This chapter describes discovery of Sanskrit by Europeans. The discovery of Sanskrit by Europeans played a determinant role in the development of comparative Indo-European linguistics. Yet, this process was neither rapid nor linear. The observation, recording, and transmission of data, the methods according to which they were analyzed and interpreted within existing theories of language, and the purposes that they were made to serve, were largely independent variables. Europeans began to study Indian languages in a sustained manner in the seventeenth century, with evangelical efforts primarily in South India. When, in 1765, the East India Company obtained the administrative rights to Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, knowledge of India's culture became a colonial necessity. Paulinus's first printed grammar provided a means to learn Sanskrit that the publications from Calcutta made a subject of literary, philosophical, and linguistic interest, not just of evangelical or colonial necessity. The identification of the root as the smallest common denominator of derived forms, vocalic alternation, derivational and inflectional suffixes, substitution rules, zeroing, etc., and the description of articulatory processes were the procedures according to which Europeans learned Sanskrit from pundits.