Yet the interest which Sir William Jones took in Oriental literature was purely æsthetic. He chose what was beautiful in Persian and translated it, as he would translate an ode of Horace. He was charmed with Kâlidâsa’s play of “Sakuntala”--and who is not?--and he left us his classical reproduction of one of the finest of Eastern gems. Being a judge in India, he thought it his duty to acquaint himself with the native law-books in their original language, and he gave us his masterly translation of the “Laws of Manu.” Sir William Jones was fully aware of the startling similarity between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek. More than a hundred years ago, in a letter written to Prince Adam Czartoryski, in the year 1770, he says: “Many learned investigators of antiquity are fully persuaded, that a very old and almost primeval language was in use among the northern nations, from which not only the Celtic dialect, but even Greek and Latin are derived; in fact, we find πατήρ and μήτηρ in Persian, nor is θυγάτηρ so far removed from _dockter_, or even ὄνομα and _nomen_ from Persian _nâm_, as to make it ridiculous to suppose that they sprang from the same root. We must confess,” he adds, “that these researches are very obscure and uncertain, and you will allow, not so agreeable as an ode of Hafez, or an elegy of Amr’alkeis.” In a letter, dated 1787, he says: “You will be surprised at the resemblance between Sanskrit and both Greek and Latin.” Colebrooke also, the great successor of Sir William Jones, was fully aware of the relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and even Slavonic. I possess some curious MS. notes of his, of the year 1801 or 1802, containing long lists of words, expressive of the most essential ideas of primitive life, and which he proved to be identical in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and Slavonic.[1]