It is perfectly true that Sanskrit had been studied before by Italian, German, and French missionaries; it is likewise perfectly true that several of these missionaries were fully aware of the close relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. A man must be blind who, after looking at a Sanskrit grammar, does not see at once the striking coincidences between the declensions and conjugations of the classical language of India and those of Greece and Italy.[6] Filippo Sassetti, who spent some time at Goa, between 1581 and 1588, had only acquired a very slight knowledge of Sanskrit before he wrote home to his friends “that it has many words in common with Italian, particularly in the numerals, in the names for God, serpent, and many others.” This was in the sixteenth century. Some of the Jesuit missionaries, however, went far beyond this. A few among them had acquired a real and comprehensive knowledge of the ancient language and literature of India, and we see them anticipate in their letters several of the most brilliant discoveries of Sir W. Jones and Professor Bopp. The père Cœurdoux,[7] a French Jesuit, writes in 1767 from Pondichery to the French Academy, asking that learned society for a solution of the question, “_How is it that Sanskrit has so many words in common with Greek and Latin?_” He presents not only long lists of words, but he calls attention to the still more curious fact, that the grammatical forms in Sanskrit show the most startling similarity with Greek and Latin. After him almost everybody who had looked at Sanskrit, and who knew Greek and Latin, made the same remark and asked the same question. But the fire only smouldered on; it would not burn up, it would not light, it would not warm. At last, owing to the exertions of the founders of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, the necessary materials for a real study of Sanskrit became accessible to the students of Europe. The voice of Frederick Schlegel roused the attention of the world at large to the startling problem that had been thrown into the arena of the intellectual chivalry of the world, and at last the glove was taken up, and men like Bopp, and Burnouf, and Pott, and Grimm, did not rest till some answer could be returned, and some account rendered of Sanskrit, that strange intruder, and great disturber of the peace of classical scholarship.