Ancient India: Its Language and Religions

...ancient civilization, which had until then been hidden from all knowledge, how could one resist an attempt to give that civilization and its language a place among known civilizations and languages? Wherever one looked, weighty and significant suggestions presented themselves, along with the temptation to let the imagination wander in aimless excursions. Furthermore, Jones was by no means the man to resist such a temptation. The vocabulary and the grammatical structure of Sanskrit convinced him that the ancient language of the Hindus was related to those of the Greeks, Romans, and Germans, and that it must have been derived along with them from a common mother tongue.*

But alongside the development of this incredibly suggestive idea, numerous fanciful theories abound in the works of Jones concerning the relationship of primitive peoples; in these theories, everything was found to be related to everything else in some way. At one point, the Hindu language was identified with that of the Old Testament; at another, Hindu civilization was linked to South American civilization. Buddha was said to be Woden the Anglo-Saxon name for Odin, the chief god in Norse mythology, and the pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt were claimed to show the style of the same workmen who built the Hindu cave-temples and chiseled the ancient images of Buddha.

Fortunately for the new study of Sanskrit, the continuation of the work begun by Jones fell to one of the most cautious and comprehensive observers of facts who have ever devoted their attention and talent to...

• The similarity of Hindu words with those of Latin, Greek, and other languages had been noticed by several people before Jones. Likewise, the correct explanation of this phenomenon—namely the kinship of the Hindu nation with the Latins and Greeks—had been declared by Father Pons as early as 1740. For a fuller account, see Benfey, History of the Science of Language original: Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, pages 222 and 333-341.