Summary
Sir William Jones, presented by Said in Orientalism as (in A. J. Arberry’s phrase) the undisputed founder of Orientalism: a jurist and magistrate in India who codified, tabulated and compared the Orient, convened the Asiatic Society of Bengal in January 1784, and pronounced Sanskrit, Greek and Latin sprung from a common source (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.87-88 / printed p.78-79).
Details
- Whereas Anquetil-Duperron opened large vistas, Jones closed them down, codifying, tabulating, comparing; before leaving England for India in 1783 he was already a master of Arabic, Hebrew and Persian, and was appointed to “an honorable and profitable place in the Indies” with the East India Company (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.86 / printed p.77).
- His “Objects of Enquiry During My Residence in Asia” enumerated the laws of the Hindus and Mohammedans, the best mode of governing Bengal, the sciences, poetry, rhetoric, music, trade and commerce of Asia and India; on August 17, 1787, he wrote to Lord Althorp that “it is my ambition to know India better than any other European ever knew it” — where, Said says, Balfour in 1910 could find the first adumbration of his claim to know the Orient (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.87 / printed p.78).
- Seven years before Jones arrived, Warren Hastings had decided Indians were to be ruled by their own laws; Charles Wilkins first mastered Sanskrit and began translating the Institutes of Manu, assisted by Jones; in January 1784 Jones convened the inaugural meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, to be for India what the Royal Society was for England (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.87 / printed p.78).
- His famous pronouncement describes Sanskrit as of a wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both a stronger affinity than could possibly have been produced by accident, so strong that no philologer could examine all three “without believing them to have sprung from some common source” (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.88 / printed p.79).
Related pages
Orientalism (1978), Orientalism, Napoleon Bonaparte, Arthur James Balfour