Sanskrit is one of the world’s first documented languages. It was unknown in Europe until the contributions of two men opened Europe’s eyes to it. Heinrich Roth (1620-1668) and later Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681-1731) began European scholarship in Sanskrit. Without the contributions of the pair, Sir William Jones could not have discovered the Indo-European language family. Without this scholarship, Western philology may not have developed as extensively as it now has.
On February 2nd 1786, Sir William Jones said to the Asiatic Society in Kolkata: “The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.” I wonder what the Sanskrit is for e14 led?
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