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
We have still to mention some of his more important Oriental
publications, which he either began or finished after his return to
England. The first is his “Algebra, with Arithmetic and Mensuration,
from the Sanskrit of Brahmagupta and Bhâskara, preceded by a
Dissertation on the State of the Sciences as known to the Hindus,”
London, 1817. It is still the standard work on the subject, and likely
to remain so, as an intimate knowledge of mathematics is but seldom
combined with so complete a mastery of Sanskrit as Colebrooke possessed.
He had been preceded by the labors of Burrow and E. Strachey; but it is
entirely due to him that mathematicians are now enabled to form a clear
idea of the progress which the Indians had made in this branch of
knowledge, especially as regards indeterminate analysis. It became
henceforth firmly established that the “Arabian Algebra had real points
of resemblance to that of the Indians, and not to that of the Greeks;
that the Diophantine analysis was only slightly cultivated by the Arabs;
and that, finally, the Indian was more scientific and profound than
either.” Some of the links in his argument, which Colebrooke himself
designated as weak, have since been subjected to renewed criticism; but
it is interesting to observe how here, too, hardly anything really new
has been added by subsequent scholars. The questions of the antiquity of
Hindu mathematics--of its indigenous or foreign origin, as well as the
dates to be assigned to the principal Sanskrit writers, such as
Bhâskara, Brahmagupta, Aryabhaṭṭa, etc.,--are very much in the same
state as he left them. And although some living scholars have tried to
follow in his footsteps, as far as learning is concerned, they have
never approached him in those qualities which are more essential to the
discovery of truth than mere reading, viz., caution, fairness, and
modesty.
Two events remain still to be noticed before we close the narrative of
the quiet and useful years which Colebrooke spent in England. In 1818 he
presented his extremely valuable collection of Sanskrit MSS. to the East
India Company, and thus founded a treasury from which every student of
Sanskrit has since drawn his best supplies. It may be truly said, that
without the free access to this collection--granted to every scholar,
English or foreign--few of the really important publications of Sanskrit
texts, which have appeared during the last fifty years, would have been
possible; so that in this sense also, Colebrooke deserves the title of
the founder of Sanskrit scholarship in Europe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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