The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.s1.19

v1.c15.s1.19

The decipherment of the inscriptions and coins, and the determination of the eras in which many of them are dated, have introduced into the obscurity of early Indian history a degree of chronological order which could not have been conceived at the time when the study of Sanskrit began in Europe. The bare fact that India possessed ancient classical literatures like those of Greece and Rome can scarcely be said to have been known to the Western World before the last quarter of the eighteenth century. At various intervals during more than a hundred years previously a few isolated students chiefly missionaries, those pioneers of learning, had indeed published accounts of Sanskrit literature and Sanskrit grammar; but it was only when a practical need made itself felt, and the serious attention of the administrators of the East India Company's possessions was directed to the importance of studying Sanskrit, that the investigation by Europeans of the ancient languages and literatures of India began in earnest. To meet the requirements of the law-courts the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, had ordered a digest to be prepared by pandits from the authoritative Sanskrit law-books; but when the work was finished no one could be found able to translate it into English. It was therefore necessary to have it translated first into Persian, and from the Persian an English version was made and published by Halhed in 1776. The object-lesson was not lost. Sanskrit was evidently of practical utility; and the East India Company adopted, and never afterwards neglected to pursue, the enlightened policy of promoting the study of the ancient languages and literatures in which the traditions of its subjects were enshrined. It remained for Sir William Jones, Judge of the High Court at Calcutta, to place this study on a firm basis by the establishment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.