A History of Indian Literature v1.c7.s2.10

v1.c7.s2.10

While the enthusiastic W. Jones, through the enthusiasm with which he brought to light Indian literary treasures, was primarily stimulating, the sober Henry Thomas Colebrooke, who continued the work of W. Jones, became the real founder of Indian philology and archaeology. Colebrooke had entered on his official career in Calcutta in 1782 as a youth of seventeen years, without troubling himself during the first eleven years of his sojourn in India about Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature. But when W. Jones died in 1794 Colebrooke had just learnt Sanskrit and had undertaken to translate from the Sanskrit into English, under Jones' guidance, a composition, prepared by native scholars, on the law of succession and contract, from the Indian law books. This translation appeared in 1797 and 1798 under the title "A Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions" in four folio volumes. From that time he devoted himself with untiring zeal to the investigation of Indian literature. His interest, contrary to that of Jones, lay not so much in the poetic as in the scientific literature. Therefore we are indebted to him not only for further works on Indian law, but also for pioneer essays on philosophy and religious life, on grammar, astronomy and the arithmetic of the Indians. Moreover it was he who, in the year 1805, in the now famous essay "On the Vedas," was the first to give definite and reliable information about the ancient sacred books of the Indians.¹ He was also the editor of the Amarkośa and other Indian dictionaries, of the famous grammar of Pāṇini, of the "Hitopadeśa," and of the epic poem "Kirātārjunīya." Further he is the author of a Sanskrit grammar, and edited and translated a number of inscriptions. Finally he amassed an exceedingly diversified collection of Indian manuscripts, which are supposed to have cost him about £10,000, and which, after his return to England, he presented to the East India Company. This collection of manuscripts is to-day one of the most valuable treasures of the library of the India Office in London.