Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 4: Essays Chiefly on the Science of LanguageMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 4: Essays Chiefly on the Science of Language
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
Let me begin with the Universities--I mean, of course the English
Universities--and more particularly that University which has been to me
for many years an _Alma Mater_, Oxford. While we have there, or are
founding there, professorships for every branch of Theology,
Jurisprudence, and Physical Science, we have hardly any provision for
the study of Oriental languages. We have a chair of Hebrew, rendered
illustrious by the greatest living theologian of England, and we have a
chair of Sanskrit, which has left its mark in the history of Sanskrit
literature; but for the modern languages of India, whether Aryan or
Dravidian, for the language and literature of Persia, both ancient and
modern, for the language and antiquities of Egypt and Babylon, for
Chinese, for Turkish, nay even for Arabic, there is nothing deserving
the name of a chair. When in a Report on University Reform, I ventured
to point out these gaps, and to remark that in the smallest of German
Universities most of these subjects were represented by professors,
I was asked whether I was in earnest in maintaining that Oxford, the
first University in what has rightly been called the greatest Oriental
Empire, ought really to support the study of Oriental languages.
The second claim we prefer is on the Missionary Societies. I have lately
incurred very severe obloquy for my supposed hostility to missionary
enterprise. All I can say is, I wish that there were ten missionaries
for every one we have now. I have always counted missionaries among my
best friends; I have again and again acknowledged how much Oriental
studies and linguistic studies in general, owe to them, and I am proud
to say that, even now, while missionaries at home have abused me in
unmeasured language, missionaries abroad, devoted, hard-working
missionaries, have thanked me for what I said of them and their work in
my lay-sermon in Westminster Abbey last December.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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