A History of Indian Literature v1.c7.s2.3

v1.c7.s2.3

Certainly already in the seventeenth, and still more in the eighteenth century, isolated travellers and missionaries acquired a certain knowledge of Indian languages, and made themselves acquainted with one or another of the works of Indian literature. But their efforts did not fall on fruitful soil. Thus in the year 1651 the Dutchman Abraham Roger who had lived as a preacher in Paliacatta (Puliat) to the north of Madras, reported in his work "Open Door to the Hidden Heathendom"¹ on the ancient Brahmanical literature of the Indians, and published some of the Proverbs of Bhartṛhari, which had been translated into Portuguese for him by a Brahman, and which were drawn upon by Herder in later years for his "Stimmen der Völker in Liedern." In the year 1699 the Jesuit Father Johann Ernst Hanxleden went to India and worked there for over thirty years in the Malabar Mission. He was himself conversant with Indian languages, and his "Grammatica Granthamia seu Samscrdu-mica" was the first Sanskrit Grammar written by a European. It was never printed, but was used by Fra Paolino de St. Bartholomeo. This Fra Paolino—an Austrian Carmelite, whose real name was J. Ph. Wessdin—is undeniably the most important of the missionaries who worked at the earliest opening-up of Indian literature. He was a missionary on the coast of Malabar from 1776 till 1789 and died in Rome in the year 1805. He wrote two Sanskrit Grammars and several learned treatises and books. His "Systema Brahmanicum" (Rome, 1792) and his "Reise nach Ostindien" (German by J. R. Forster, Berlin, 1798) show a great knowledge of India and the Brahmanical literature, as well as a deep study of Indian languages and especially of Indian religious thought. But yet his work too has left only faint traces behind.