Sir George Grierson and Indian Linguistics

Abstract

THE commemorative volume “Indian and Iranian Studies” presented to Sir George A. Grierson by friends and admirers on the occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday on January 7, and published as a special issue by the School of Oriental Studies of the University of London (Bull., 8, 2–3, 504. 255.), is a remarkable tribute to even so great a scholar. This will be most readily appreciated in the extent to which it shows how those who have here united to do him honour fifty-three scholars drawn from thirteen different countries, including India and the United States have been indebted tohim in outlook or method or as a contributory source of their material. In this volume of “Studies” not unnaturally, and as is usual in collections of its class, a considerable proportion is of highly specialised interest, though even here certain of them as, for example, the communications dealing with the Karosthi material retrieved from the Central Asiatic Desert by Sir Aurel Stein or Colonel D. L. R. Lorimer's “Nugae Burushaskicae”, glance at broader issues. Others, however, such as the contributions by Dr. T. Grahame Bailey or Prof. A. Barannikov, to name two only, which deal with the relation of the Sanskritic to other elements in the vernaculars, or Dr. F. Otto Shrader on the Uralian element in the Dravida and the Munda tongues, have a direct interest for those who are dealing with current problems in Indianethnology; while the value of linguistic studies in cultural investigation is shown by such inquiries as those of Prof. J. Block on the character of the Vedic plough and the late Dr. J. Charpentier on the meaning of ‘Sakudhuma’ and thesuggestion arising therefrom as to ritual recognition of the Pleiades in Vedic times. It is remarkable, however, howonevery side there is evidence that in these investigations the work of Sir George Grierson and his linguistic survey ofIndia have been fundamental.