Sanskrit proved an extremely difficult language even for a polyglot. But ‘I am learning it more grammatically and
accurately than the indolence of childhood and the impatience of youth allowed me to learn any other.’ Perhaps it was this highly systematic approach which enabled him to make his first major discovery. For, within six months, he was experiencing a sense of
déjà vu
; the grammar, the vocabulary even, seemed to bear some resemblance to Greek and Latin. The Sanskrit for mother was
matr,
mouse
mus
and so on. For someone with no Sanskrit-English dictionary, groping to catch the phrases and inflections of a glib
pandit
, it was not as obvious as it seems now. Nor were the implications clear. It could just be that there were a few borrowed words, either from Sanskrit to Greek or vice versa. Jones, though, guessed that he was on to something more important and in February 1786 he presented his
theory to the Asiatic Society.
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 the forms of grammar, than can possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without believing them to have sprung from
some common source
, which perhaps no longer exists. There is similar reason though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick [i.e. Germanic] and Celtick, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
It was the genius of Sir William
Jones that in the chance discovery of what would look to most like a minor coincidence, he could recognize and interpret a cardinal concept. He had not only discovered what later became known as the Indo-European family of languages and indicated that they had a common lost origin; he had in fact laid down the principles of comparative philology. If the study of languages could reveal something
as shattering as the common Aryan origin of the ancient peoples of Europe and north India it could clearly be used as a method of historical research. Languages evidently evolved in much the same way as, say, architectural styles. The state of a language at any given period could be used as an indicator of the degree of civilization reached by those who used it. Equally, it could be a way of giving
an approximate date to literary compositions of unknown antiquity. Philological studies have since helped to prise open the secrets of many ancient civilizations. India, with its wealth of ancient literature and inscriptions, has benefited more than most, and the dates now ascribed to its earliest literary compositions depend entirely on the evidence of philology.
More immediately, Jones’s discovery
clearly showed that the people of northern India, far from being savages, were actually of the same ethnic origin as their British rulers. Also, if Sanskrit was ‘more perfect’ etc. than Greek or Latin, then the record of civilization in India might be longer than in Europe. However sobering for the
sahibs,
it was a tremendous boost for oriental studies. The translation of Sanskrit literature suddenly
became a matter of much wider interest. What might it not tell of the civilization of this ancient people, and perhaps of the common origins of all the Aryan peoples? And what about the chronology? Just how old were the various Sanskrit writings?
In what leisure was left after a strenuous life in the courts, Jones forged ahead with his studies. ‘I hold every day lost in which I acquire no new
knowledge of man or nature,’ he wrote in 1787. ‘It is my ambition to know India better than any other European ever knew it. I rise an hour before the sun and walk from my garden to the fort, about three miles; & by seven I am ready for my
pandit
with whom I read Sanskrit; at eight come a Persian or Arab alternately with whom I read till nine; at nine come the attorneys with affidavits; I am then
robed and ready for court.’ Dinner was at 3 p.m. ‘When the sun is sunk in the Ganges we drive back to the Gardens either in our post-chaise or Anna’s phaeton drawn by a pair of beautiful Nepal horses. After tea time we read; and never sit up, if we can avoid it, after ten.’ He was teaching Anna Maria algebra, and together they were reading Dante, Ariosto and Tasso in the original. Life in Garden
Reach had become as idyllic as at their bungalow in Krishnagar. Together they studied botany: Anna Maria drew and painted the plants; Sir William classified them according to the system of Linnaeus and wrote a Latin description of each.
He drew the line at actually picking the flowers. Much as he loved the natural sciences, he had a very Buddhist aversion to destroying life in any form. His studies
encouraged botany in India but temporarily stalled zoology. ‘I cannot reconcile to my notions of humanity the idea of making innocent beasts miserable and mangling harmless birds.’ The livestock that thronged their garden responded to this humane outlook. From the Joneses’ dairy came ‘the best butter in India’. Their sheep and goats, safe from the butcher’s knife, would feed from Anna Maria’s
hand. It was all ‘like what the poets tell us of the golden ages; & you might see a kid and a tiger playing at Anna’s feet. The tiger is not as large as a full grown cat, though he will be as large as an ox: he is suckled by a she-goat and has all the gentleness of his foster-mother.’ Jones always insisted that even in England he had never been unhappy; ‘but I was never happy till I settled in
India’.
He was also in a state of intense excitement. ‘Sanskrit literature is indeed a new world; the language (which I begin to speak with ease) is the Latin of India and a sister of Latin and Greek. In Sanskrit are written half a million of stanzas on sacred history and literature, epic and lyric poems innumerable, and (what is wonderful) tragedies and comedies not to be counted, about 2000
years old, besides works on law (my great object), on medicine, on theology, on arithmetic, on ethics and so on to infinity.’ He felt like a man who had stumbled unawares on the whole corpus of classical literature. How could he convey this excitement?
Suppose Greek literature to be known in modern Greece only, and there to be in the hands of priests and philosophers; and suppose them to be still worshippers of Jupiter and Apollo; suppose Greece to have been conquered successively by Goths, Huns, Vandals and Tartars, and lastly by the British; then suppose a court of judicature to be established by the British parliament, at Athens, and an inquisitive Englishman to be one of the judges; suppose him to learn Greek there, which none of his countrymen knew, and to read Homer, Pindar, Plato, which no other European had ever heard of. Such am I in this country; substituting Sanskrit for Greek, the Brahmins for the priests of Jupiter, and Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa for Homer, Plato and Pindar.
Jones had no doubts that Sanskrit literature, like the language itself, was in every way the equal of Greek or Latin literature. He was now, in 1787, translating a drama by Kalidasa, ‘the
Indian Shakespeare’. Completed in 1788 and published the following year,
Sakuntala
fully justified his expectations. It was the first Sanskrit work to be translated purely for its literary merit. Despite the omission of some passages too bold for contemporary tastes – like the one detailing the heroine’s swelling breasts – the comparison of Kalidasa with Shakespeare was not excessively partisan.
Sakuntala
was strongly reminiscent of
The Tempest
or
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and was an instant success. The Calcutta edition was followed by two London editions within the space of three years.
Jones was, however, wrong about one thing. Kalidasa was known to have lived in the age of a king called Vikramaditya, but Jones’s dating of ‘above 2000 years old’ was a few centuries out. Vikramaditya
was the tide of several Indian sovereigns, and Kalidasa’s patron reigned about
AD
400. He was thus a contemporary of St Augustine, not Homer.
As the literary evidence of a great classical age in Indian history accumulated, the question of dates became more and more vexed. Sanskrit literature included some long lists of kings, but no chronicles – and nothing that could be regarded as historical
writing. This was a bitter disappointment. Where was the Indian Tacitus? And, without him, how could this civilization be fitted into any kind of historical context? Jones heard tell of the
Rajatarangini,
a Kashmiri work of the twelfth century which we now know to be the only historical work relating to pre-Islamic India. But in time and place it is far removed from the classical age, and anyway,
Jones was not able to get a copy.
Failing that, there was just one date in the whole of ancient Indian history – 326
BC
which, as every schoolboy was expected to know, was the year that Alexander the Great had invaded the Punjab. Strangely, this event, so significant to western historians, seemed to have entirely escaped the attention of Sanskrit authors. Nowhere did Jones find any mention of
Greeks or any sign of Greek influence.
Through the early 1790s he continued to broaden the scope of his Sanskrit reading. He had already discovered that chess and algebra were of Indian origin; to these, after studying a Sanskrit treatise on music, he added the heptatonic scale. He was also making progress with his legal code and creating something of a reputation in the courts. ‘I can now read
both Sanskrit and Arabic with so much ease that the native lawyers can never impose upon the courts in which I sit.’ To the acclaim of scholars all over the world (Dr Johnson called him ‘one of the most enlightened of the sons of men’) was added the sincere regard and affection of Bengalis, whether petitioners or
pandits.
India was exercising its spell on him. His planned stay of six years was
up; but he no longer yearned to return to England. He might make a visit to Europe, but he planned to be still in India at the turn of the century. Hinduism he found increasingly attractive and the doctrine of reincarnation seemed ‘incomparably more rational, more pious and more likely to deter men from vice than the horrid opinions inculcated by Christians of punishment without end’. But he was
not tempted to forsake Christianity. Indeed there was no need; the
Thirty-nine Articles,
if written in Sanskrit, would pass for the work of a Brahmin and be quite acceptable to Hindus.
By now the Joneses had become something of an institution. Young Thomas Twining, only seventeen and just arrived in India, was so honoured by an invitation to dine with them that he filled a whole page of his journal
with an account of the visit.
The party consisted of Sir William and Lady Jones, another gentleman and myself. Sir William was very cheerful and agreeable. He made some observations on the mysterious word
om
of the Hindoos, and other Indian subjects. While sitting after dinner he suddenly called out with a loud voice ‘Othello, Othello’. Waiting for a minute or two and Othello not coming, he repeated his summons, ‘Othello, Othello’. His particularly fine voice, his white Indian dress, surmounted by a small black wig, his cheerfulness and great celebrity, rendered this scene extremely interesting. I was surprised that no one, Muslim or Hindoo, answered his summons. At last I saw a black turtle of very large size, crawling slowly towards us from an adjoining room. It made its way to the side of Sir William’s chair, where it remained, he giving it something it seemed to like. Sir William observed that he was fond of birds, but had little pleasure seeing them or hearing them unless they were at liberty; and he no doubt would have liberated Othello if he had not considered that he was safer by the side of his table than he would be in the Ganges.
I passed a most pleasant day in the company of this distinguished and able man. He was so good as to express some approbation of my Persian studies, and repeated to me two lines of a Persian couplet, and also his translations of them -
Kill not that ant that steals a little grain;
It lives with pleasure, and it dies with pain.
Sitting in the shade on the banks of the Hughli, surrounded by venerable
pandits
and tame livestock,
with Anna Maria sketching quietly in the background, he seemed the archetype of the Indian teacher – scholar and law-giver, patron to man and beast. It was the same at the Asiatic Society. He presided at almost every meeting, and at the beginning of each year delivered a challenging discourse on some different aspect of oriental studies. Right from the start there had been something Socratic
in his manner – You will investigate this, enquire into that, etc., etc. – and in his last discourse he referred to the Society as a ‘symposiack assembly’. Revered and loved (though rarely seen) by Calcutta society, he was indeed the Indian Socrates.
In 1793 he delivered his tenth discourse and celebrated the occasion by casually coming out with the long-awaited breakthrough on Indian chronology.
‘The jurisprudence of the Hindus and Arabs being the field I have chosen for my regular toil, you cannot expect that I should greatly enlarge your collection of historical knowledge; but I may be able to offer you some occasional tribute, and I cannot help mentioning a discovery which accident threw my way.’ He had already laid down the basis of literary and linguistic studies; now, at last,
he had unearthed a foundation from which a start could be made with the reconstruction of India’s ancient history. The discovery may have been accidental, but it was his greatest; no one without his immense learning and his genius for spotting a relevant fact could have made it.