Ancient India: Its Language and Religions

...the study of oriental literatures. This was Henry Thomas Colebrooke (born 1765; went to India 1782), the most active in the energetic group of Indian administrative officers. He served at times as a government official, at other times as a judge, and then as a diplomat—a man highly knowledgeable in Indian agriculture and trade. One can hardly look without amazement at the vast amount of information which he was able to reveal during the long period he dedicated to Sanskrit, drawn from his incomparable collection of manuscripts. Today, these are among the principal treasures of the India Office Library. Colebrooke, who well knew the limits of his own abilities, stayed away from the realm of Indian poetry. However, in the literature of law, grammar, philosophy, and astronomy, he possessed a depth of reading that may never be matched again. He was the one who provided the first comprehensive account regarding the literature of the Veda the oldest and most sacred scriptures of Hinduism.

Colebrooke’s investigations are light on speculation; one might say he held back too much from trying to understand the historical origins original: "genesis" of the subjects he studied. But he established the actual foundation for broad areas of Hindu research. He himself was filled with wonder at the ever-widening perspectives of that literature being revealed to him, and he inspires our own admiration for the steady and patient work with which he sought to explore those distant fields.

While Colebrooke was at the peak of his activity, interest in Hindu research began to wake up in a country that has done more than any other to turn these studies into a firm and well-established science—Germany.

For the discoveries of Jones and Colebrooke there