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
Colebrooke’s stay in India was a long one. He arrived there in 1782,
when only seventeen years of age, and he left it in 1815, at the age of
fifty. During all this time we see him uninterruptedly engaged in his
official work, and devoting all his leisure to literary labor. The
results which we have noticed so far, were already astonishing, and
quite sufficient to form a solid basis of his literary fame. But we have
by no means exhausted the roll of his works. We saw that a supplement to
the “Digest of Laws” occupied him for several years. In it he proposed
to recast the whole title of inheritance, so imperfectly treated in the
“Digest” which he translated, and supplement it with a series of
compilations on the several heads of Criminal Law, Pleading, and
Evidence, as treated by Indian jurists. In a letter to Sir T. Strange he
speaks of the Sanskrit text as complete, and of the translation as
considerably advanced; but it was not till 1810 that he published, as a
first installment, his translation of two important treatises on
inheritance, representing the views of different schools on this
subject. Much of the material which he collected with a view of
improving the administration of law in India, and bringing it into
harmony with the legal traditions of the country, remained unpublished,
partly because his labors were anticipated by timely reforms, partly
because his official duties became too onerous to allow him to finish
his work in a manner satisfactory to himself.
But although the bent of Colebrooke’s mind was originally scientific,
and the philological researches which have conferred the greatest lustre
on his name grew insensibly beneath his pen, the services he rendered to
Indian jurisprudence would deserve the highest praise and gratitude if
he had no other title to fame. Among his earlier studies he had applied
himself to the Roman law with a zeal uncommon among Englishmen of his
standing, and he has left behind him a treatise on the Roman Law of
Contracts. When he directed the same powers of investigation to the
sources of Indian law he found everything in confusion. The texts and
glosses were various and confused. The local customs which abound in
India had not been discriminated. Printing was of course unknown to
these texts; and as no supreme judicial intelligence and authority
existed to give unity to the whole system, nothing could be more
perplexing than the state of the law. From this chaos Colebrooke brought
forth order and light. The publication of the “Dhaya-bhâga,” as the
cardinal exposition of the law of inheritance, which is the basis of
Hindu society, laid the foundation of no less a work than the revival of
Hindu jurisprudence, which had been overlaid by the Mohammedan conquest.
On this foundation a superstructure has now been raised by the combined
efforts of Indian and English lawyers: but the authority which is to
this day most frequently invoked as one of conclusive weight and
learning is that of Colebrooke.
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