At the head of these scholars stands, without dispute, Prof. William Dwight Whitney, whose, linguistic acquirements and philosophical treatment of difficult philological problems have earned for him a very high and well-merited reputation. Nor is this opinion a merely patriotic and partial estimate. Prof. Whitney's merits as a Sanskrit scholar and comparative philologist are fully acknowledged, not only in this country, but by the eminent Orientalists of Europe. The first periodical of Germany and of the world for the comparative study of languages (Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete des Deutschen, Griechischen und Lateinischen, Berlin, 1872), in a late number recognizes, in the most flattering manner, Prof. Whitney's high rank in the philological republic of letters, and refers in complimentary terms to the fact that he is well known in Germany as the editor of the Sanskrit text of the Atharva Veda.
We may here incidentally note, in the same number of the Zeitschrift, another gratifying recognition of advanced American scholarship. We refer to a review of Prof. March's Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon, from the pen of Moritz Heyne, the well-known author of the Brief Comparative Grammar of the Old German Dialects, and editor of the celebrated editions of the Mœso-Gothic Bible of Ulphilas, and of the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf. The German reviewer credits Prof. March's work with extensive and original investigation, great erudition in the Anglo-Saxon texts, and valuable contributions to the grammar of the language. He adds, that the study of Anglo-Saxon is pursued with more zeal and success in the United States than in England. Solid commendation like this, from such a source, speaks well for American progress in the field of philological science.
During the past twenty years, Prof. Whitney has published numerous essays on Sanskrit literature which, limited to the special circulation of scientific or literary periodicals, have not fallen under the notice of the general reading public. Many of these articles he has now collected and published in a volume,[139] edited by himself. Four of the essays are on the Vedas and Vedic literature, one on the Avesta (commonly called the Zend-Avesta), and seven upon various philological topics, including two reviews of Max Müller's Lectures on Language, which are admirable specimens of temperate and careful criticism, guided by sound scholarship.
Prof. Whitney's first paper on the Vedas (originally published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iii., 1853) opens thus:
“It is a truth now well established, that the Vedas furnish the only sure foundation on which a knowledge of ancient and modern India can be built up. They are therefore at present engrossing the larger share of the attention of those who pursue this branch of Oriental study. Only recently, however, has their paramount importance been fully recognized: it was by slow degrees that [pg 324]they made their way up to the consideration in which they are now held. Once it was questioned whether any such books as the Vedas really existed, or whether, if they did exist, the jealous care of the Brahmans would ever allow them to be laid open to European eyes. This doubt dispelled, they were first introduced to the near acquaintance of scholars in the West by Colebrooke.”
Not stopping to raise a question as to just reclamation in favor of Sir William Jones for a portion at least of the credit of the introduction of the Vedas to the “acquaintance of scholars in the West,” which, perhaps Professor Whitney means to solve in advance by a distinction between acquaintance and “near acquaintance,” we would observe that this comprehensive statement as to the introduction of the Vedas to European scholars takes for granted the previous interesting history of the modern discovery of the existence of the Sanskrit and of Vedic literature. We use the expression “takes for granted” in no invidious sense.
The author was writing for scholars who, he had a right to assume, were already acquainted with the objective history of his subject-matter, and were probably informed as to the details of the gradual steps by which the certainty of the existence of a great language and a rich literature long buried in darkness was at length brought to light. His concern was with the internal, not the external, history of Sanskrit. Now, it is upon this external history that we propose to say something, returning to Prof. Whitney's work when we reach the subject of the Vedas.
It is not necessary that our readers should, to any extent, be linguists or philologists in order to become deeply interested in the relation of the modern discovery of a language so old that it had ceased to be spoken and was a dead language hundreds of years before the Christian era—a language to which cannot with any certainty be assigned the name of the nation or people who spoke it, and which is at once the most ancient of all known tongues, living or dead, and, despite all modern research, still prehistoric.
To our Catholic readers, the narration of this discovery is full of interest; for in it they will recognize an additional version of the familiar story of the enlightened intelligence, piety, and self-sacrifice of our devoted missionaries who, combining active zeal for knowledge with apostolic zeal for souls, amid privation and suffering, even in distant and savage lands, with one hand built up the walls of Zion, while with the other they erected temples to science.
In order fully to appreciate the bearing and importance of the revelation of Sanskrit to Europe, it is essential that we should first look a moment upon the condition of European comparative philology at the end of the XVIth and commencement of the XVIIth centuries. A short digression will suffice for this.