William Dwight Whitney

by Thomas D. Seymour

In 1848, largely under the influence and with the encouragement of his father's pastor, the Rev. George E. Day (for a quarter of a century after 1866 Professor of Hebrew at Yale, and at present Dean of the Yale Divinity School), Mr. Whitney directed his attention to the study of Sanskrit, for which he found books in the library of his elder brother, who had recently returned from Europe. A really good mind can find pleasure and success in any one of several different fields of research. Not often, however, do we find such marked examples of men of real talent manifesting distinct tastes and power in widely different departments of learning as in the case of these two brothers. Mr. J. D. Whitney went to Germany primarily in order to prepare himself for mineralogical and geological work, but became interested in the study of languages and attended (with but two fellow-listeners) a course of lectures on Sanskrit at Berlin. He himself says that he might have taken up philology in earnest, abandoning natural science altogether, if immediately after his return to his home he had not received an appointment to engage in a geological survey of a new and interesting region under United States authority. His philological studies have borne fruit in his 'Names and Places—Studies in Geographical and Topographical Nomenclature,' published in 1888, and in the more than four thousand definitions he furnished to the Century Dictionary. Mr. W. D. Whitney certainly had great ability in the study of natural science. Doubtless the accident of his finding various linguistic books ready to hand, at the time when his mental powers were most actively developing, had much to do with his turning in the direction of philology. During the summer which he spent with his brother on Lake Superior he had a Sanskrit grammar with him, which he studied at odd moments when not engaged in collecting plants or computing barometrical observations. Yale College has had another marked example of a scholar with equal ability and tastes for widely diverse studies, in Professor James Hadley, whose first published work was in the department of mathematics, and of whom a high authority said that the best mathematician in the country was spoiled when Mr. Hadley devoted himself to Greek!

Mr. Whitney's practical banker father was not fully satisfied with his plan of giving himself to Oriental studies, and asked his pastor whether a man could support himself in life by studying and teaching Sanskrit. Dr. Day made the very wise answer that if a man had any exact and thorough knowledge, he was likely to be able to use it. As a Massachusetts man, the father turned naturally to Harvard as the proper place for his son's pursuit of advanced studies, but his pastor called his attention to the newly established department of Philosophy and the Arts at New Haven as the only definite arrangement yet made in this country for university work, and especially to the unique equipment of the special department of Oriental languages.

Before going to New Haven to study, Mr. Whitney prepared and published in the Bibliotheca Sacra an article (translated and abridged from von Bohlen) on the 'Grammatical Structure of the Sanskrit'; and in the same periodical, in the following year, he published a 'Comparison of the Greek and Latin Verbs.'

In the autumn of 1849, too late for his name to appear in the catalogue of that year, Mr. Whitney came to Yale and studied through the remainder of the college year under Professor Salisbury. His associate in study was Professor James Hadley (six years older than himself, but only three years older in college age), who had been appointed assistant professor of Greek in 1848. The relations of the two continued most intimate and mutually stimulating until the death of Professor Hadley in 1872. Mr. Whitney edited a volume of Professor Hadley's Essays, in 1873, and wrote a brief but highly appreciative sketch of his friend for the large work entitled 'Yale College,' published in 1879.

Professor Salisbury was graduated at Yale in 1832. During more than three years' residence abroad, 1836-39, he studied with De Sacy and Garcin de Tassy in Paris and with Bopp in Berlin. In 1841 he was invited to a professorship of the Arabic and Sanskrit languages in Yale College, without the expectation of pecuniary compensation. This was only nine years after the foundation of the Sanskrit professorship (of H. H. Wilson) at Oxford, and twelve years after Lassen was made Professor Extraordinarius at Bonn. He returned to Europe in 1842 for a year, and read privatissime Arabic with Freytag and Sanskrit with Lassen, at Bonn. In 1846 he was made the Corresponding Secretary of the American Oriental Society, and (to use Mr. Whitney's words) "for some ten years Professor Salisbury was virtually the Society, doing its work and paying its bills. He gave it standing and credit in the world of scholars, as an organization that could originate and make public valuable material; after such a start, it was sure of respectful attention to whatever it might do." The Society had published nothing before he took charge of this office. Professor Salisbury also secured valuable Arabic and Sanskrit manuscripts and books from De Sacy's library and elsewhere in Europe; and Professor FitzEdward Hall, then at Benares, procured for him many expensive and important Sanskrit publications from India. His services and generosity in procuring fonts of Oriental type, and his wisdom in bringing the Oriental Society into close connection with the studies of foreign missionaries, should not be forgotten. He was the only trained Orientalist in this country, until Mr. Whitney's return in 1853, and had an admirably equipped library. In the Yale catalogue of 1841-42, Professor Salisbury's name appears for the first time in the list of the faculty as Professor of the Arabic and Sanskrit Languages and Literature. In the catalogue of 1843-44, announcement is made that "the Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit will give instruction on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in Arabic grammar with the interpretation of the Korân and the Mo'allakas, and on Fridays and Saturdays in Sanskrit grammar with the interpretation of the laws of Manu." In the following year we are told that "the Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit proposes to commence this year, in the ensuing summer, a free course of lectures on the Sacred Code of the Hindus, the Manava Dharma Sastra." In 1845 for the first time appears a modestly-placed paragraph, saying "Instruction is also given by the Professors to Resident Graduates, provided a sufficient number present themselves to form a class." This was followed by the offer of a "course of lectures on the literary history and doctrines of the Kurân," or instruction in the elements of Sanskrit. In 1847 appeared the formal announcement of the opening of the Department of Philosophy and the Arts, with definite arrangements for advanced work. The philological courses were by President Woolsey (Thucydides or Pindar), Professor Kingsley ("in such Latin author as may be agreed upon"), Professor Gibbs ("lectures on some points of general Philology"), and Professor Salisbury (Arabic Grammar, and "some of the relations of the Arabic to other of the Shemitish dialects").

Marvellous stories are told in student-tradition of the rapid progress made by Mr. Whitney and Mr. Hadley—that they learned all the paradigms of Bopp's grammar in two lessons, etc. The basis of the stories is partly the fact that both already read simple Sanskrit with ease, but it is certain that few teachers ever had such a class. They were Professor Salisbury's first and last pupils in Sanskrit, but he might well feel proud of the record. He himself says of them that "their quickness of perception and unerring exactness of acquisition soon made it evident that the teacher and the taught must change places."

In 1850 Mr. Whitney went to Germany and spent three winter semesters in studying with Weber, Bopp, and Lepsius in Berlin, and two summer semesters at work with Roth in Tübingen. At the suggestion of Roth he undertook with this master the publication of the Atharva-Veda, and copied and collated the Berlin MSS of this work. In 1852 he sent to the American Oriental Society a paper, read at their October meeting of that year, on 'The main results of the later Vedic researches in Germany.' A letter from Weber, dated at Berlin, Dec. 28, 1852, is interesting in this connection on several accounts. He writes: "I hope ere long Sanskrit studies will flourish in America more than in England, where with the only exception of the venerable and not-to-be-praised-enough Professor Wilson nobody seems to care for them so much as to devote his life to them. The East India Company certainly does all that is in its power to help the publication of the Vedic texts, but it does not find English hands to achieve it.... It is certainly very discouraging to see that Professor Wilson during all the time since he got his professorship in Oxford, has not succeeded in bringing up even one Sanskrit scholar who might claim to be regarded as one who has done at least some little service to our Sanskrit philology.... I have to congratulate you most heartily on your countryman Mr. Whitney, who is now intensely engaged in the preparations for an edition of the Atharva Samhitā in union with Professor Roth of Tübingen. The next number of the Indische Studien, too, which is now in press, contains from him tables showing the natural relation of the four now known Samhitās of the Veda,—an attempt in which he was greatly indebted to Professor Roth's communications, but which still remains also a very favorable specimen of his own assiduity and correctness."

The following letters need little explanation. We note with interest how soon the first followed the receipt of Weber's letter which has just been quoted. The spirit which prompted the offer of the first letter is certainly unusual in its generosity—not only surrendering a professorial chair, but also providing for its endowment. The modesty and delicacy of the reply seem as extraordinary at the present day, and were perhaps as rare forty years ago.

Under date of February 19, 1853, Professor Salisbury wrote to Mr. Whitney: "... I have observed your course of study and the rapidity of your acquisitions since you have been abroad with much interest and have seen in this, together with what I have known otherwise of your tastes and talents, a way opening for relief to myself which I have long desired. The prospect has been the more pleasing to me inasmuch as I have also seen that I might be able through you to bring new honor to my 'alma mater.'... It is also much at heart with me to secure ... assistance to myself in editing and endeavouring in every way to improve the Journal of the Oriental Society." Professor Salisbury proposed that Mr. Whitney should be made "Professor of the Sanskrit and its relations to the kindred languages, and of Sanskrit literature, in the Department of Philosophy and the Arts in Yale College," his term of service to begin Aug. 8, 1853;—it being understood that Mr. Whitney would include in his instructions the teaching of modern languages to undergraduates, and should receive the fees which were then paid for such teaching. It was understood, further, that Mr. Whitney would co-operate with Professor Salisbury in editing the Journal of the Oriental Society. Professor Salisbury undertook to create a fund which with the fees for modern-language instruction might furnish nearly the ordinary salary of a Yale professor at that time.