William Jones and Indo-Persian Scholarship

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article offers a brief examination of the role of early modern Indo-Persian (especially Mughal) philology and other scholarship in shaping Sir William Jones’s early career as an orientalist. Long before he went to India, Jones had already spent nearly two decades studying such Mughal scholarly works (at times with the help of Mughal tutors and other informants); and even after arriving in India, for the first few years before he began learning Sanskrit, his access to Indian knowledge systems was largely limited to whatever materials were available in Persian, such as Mughal translations of Sanskrit epics, works on Hindi literature, studies of Indian mysticism (both Hindu and Muslim), treatises on Hindustani music, and the like. Given Jones’s place as a central figure in the received narrative about the onset of intellectual modernity, then, the question arises: is there a place for such Mughal scholars and scholarship in a more globalized, less Eurocentric, history of the modern humanities?