William Jones

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Sir William Jones (28.9.1746 – 27.4.1794) was an Anglo-Welsh philologist, a puisne judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal, and a scholar of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among European and Indian languages, which would later be known as Indo-European languages. He, along with Henry Thomas Colebrooke and Nathaniel Halhed, founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.[1]

Biography

William Jones was born in London at Beaufort Buildings, Westminster; his father William Jones (1675–1749) was a mathematician from Anglesey in Wales, noted for introducing the use of the symbol π. The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, who in addition to his native languages English and Welsh, learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age.[2] By the end of his life he knew eight languages with critical thoroughness, was fluent in a further eight, with a dictionary at hand, and had a fair competence in another twelve.[3]

Jones' father died when he was aged three, and his mother Mary Nix Jones raised him. He was sent to Harrow School in September 1753 and then went on to University College, Oxford. He graduated there in 1768 and became M.A. in 1773. Financially constrained, he took a position tutoring the seven-year-old Lord Althorp, son of Earl Spencer. For the next six years he worked as a tutor and translator. During this time he published Histoire de Nader Chah (1770), a French translation of a work originally written in Persian by Mirza Mehdi Khan Astarabadi. This was done at the request of King Christian VII of Denmark: he had visited Jones, who by the age of 24 had already acquired a reputation as an orientalist. This would be the first of numerous works on Persia, Turkey, and the Middle East in general.


In 1770, Jones joined the Middle Temple and studied law for three years, a preliminary to his life-work in India. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 30 April 1772. After a spell as a circuit judge in Wales, and a fruitless attempt to resolve the conflict that eventually led to the American Revolution in concert with Benjamin Franklin in Paris.

In 1783 William Jones was appointed judge to the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Calcutta, Bengal on 4 March 1783, and on 20 March 1783 he was knighted to dispense justice in the vast new British colony of India. [4]

In April 1783 he married Anna Maria Shipley, the eldest daughter of Dr. Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of Llandaff and Bishop of St Asaph. Anna Maria used her artistic skills to help Jones document life in India. On 25 September 1783 he arrived in Calcutta.

Jones was a radical political thinker, a friend of American independence. His work, The principles of government; in a dialogue between a scholar and a peasant (1783), was the subject of a trial for seditious libel after it was reprinted by his brother-in-law William Shipley.

In the Subcontinent he was entranced by Indian culture, an as-yet untouched field in European scholarship, and on 15 January 1784 he founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta and started a journal called Asiatick Researches.[citation needed] He studied the Vedas with Rāmalocana, a pandit teaching at the Nadiya Hindu university, becoming a proficient Sanskritist.[5] Jones kept up a ten-year correspondence on the topic of jyotisa or Hindu astronomy with fellow orientalist Samuel Davis.[6]

Over the next ten years he would produce a flood of works on India, launching the modern study of the subcontinent in virtually every social science. He also wrote on the local laws, music, literature, botany, and geography, and made the first English translations of several important works of Indian literature.

Sir William Jones sometimes also went by the nom de plume Youns Uksfardi (یونس اوکسفردی, "Jones of Oxford"). This pen name can be seen on the inner front cover of his Persian Grammar published in 1771 (and in subsequent editions).

He died in Calcutta on 27 April 1794 at the age of 47 and is buried in South Park Street Cemetery.[7]

Scholarly contributions

Jones is known today for making and propagating the observation about genetic relation between the Indo-European languages. In his Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society (1786) he suggested that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin languages had a common root, and that indeed they may all be further related, in turn, to Gothic and the Celtic languages, as well as to Persian.[8] Although his name is closely associated with this observation, he was not the first to make it. In the 16th century, European visitors to India became aware of similarities between Indian and European languages[9] and as early as 1653 Van Boxhorn had published a proposal for a proto-language ("Scythian") for Germanic, Romance, Greek, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic and Iranian.[10] Finally, in a memoir sent to the French Academy of Sciences in 1767 Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux, a French Jesuit who spent all his life in India, had specifically demonstrated the existing analogy between Sanskrit and European languages.[11] In 1786 Jones postulated a proto-language uniting Sanskrit, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Germanic and Celtic, but in many ways his work was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi.[12]

Nevertheless, Jones' third annual discourse before the Asiatic Society on the history and culture of the Hindus (delivered on 2 February 1786 and published in 1788) with the famed "philologer" passage is often cited as the beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies.[13]

The Sanscrit 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 could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family. [14]

This common source came to be known as Proto-Indo-European.[15]

Jones was the first to propose a racial division of India involving an Aryan invasion but at that time there was insufficient evidence to support it. It was an idea later taken up by British administrators such as Herbert Hope Risley but remains disputed today.[16]

Jones also propounded theories that might appear peculiar today but were less so in his time. For example, he believed that Egyptian priests had migrated and settled down in India in prehistoric times. He also posited that the Chinese were originally Hindus belonging to the Kshatriya caste.[17]

सर विलियम जोंस

सर विलियम जोंस (28 सितम्बर 1746 – 27 अप्रैल 1794)), अंग्रेज प्राच्य विद्यापंडित और विधिशास्त्री तथा प्राचीन भारत संबंधी सांस्कृतिक अनुसंधानों का प्रारंभकर्ता थे। आपने यूरोपियन और संस्कृत भाषाओं में संबंध स्थापित किया और बताया कि यूरोपियन भाषाओं का मूल संस्कृत भाषा में निहित है। आपके द्वारा ही संयुक्त रूप से इन भाषाओं को इंडो-युरोपियन भाषायें कहा गया।

लंदन में 28 सितंबर 1746 को जन्म। हैरो और आक्सफर्ड में शिक्षा प्राप्त की। शीघ्र ही उसने इब्रानी, फारसी, अरबी और चीनी भाषाओं का अभ्यास कर लिया। इनके अतिरिक्त जर्मन, इतावली, फ्रेंच, स्पेनी और पुर्तगाली भाषाओं पर भी उसका अच्छा अधिकार था। नादिरशाह के जीवनवृत का फारसी से फ्रेंच भाषा में उसका अनुवाद 1770 में प्रकाशित हुआ। 1771 में उसने फारसी व्याकरण पर एक पुस्तक लिखी। 1774 में "पोएसिअस असिपातिका कोमेंतेरिओरम लिबरीसेम्स" और 1783 में "मोअल्लकात" नामक सात अरबी कविताओं का अनुवाद किया। फिर उसने पूर्वी साहित्य, भाषाशास्त्र और दर्शन पर भी अनेक महत्वपूर्ण पुस्तकें लिखी और अनुवाद किए।

कानून में भी उसने अच्छी पुस्तकें लिखीं है। उसी "आन द ला ऑव बेलमेंट्स" (1781) विशेष प्रसिद्ध है। 1774 से उसने अपना जीवन कानून के क्षेत्र में लगाया और 1783 में बंगाल के उच्च न्यायालय (सुप्रीम कोर्ट) में न्यायाधीश नियुक्त हुआ। उसी वर्ष उसे "सर" की उपाधि मिली।

भारत में उसने पूर्वी विषयों के अध्ययन में गंभीर रुचि प्रदर्शित की। उसने संस्कृत का अध्ययन किया और 1784 में "बंगाल एशियाटिक सोसाइटी" की स्थापना की जिससे भारत के इतिहास, पुरातत्व, विशेषकर साहित्य और विधिशास्त्र संबंधी अध्ययन की नींव पड़ी। यूरोप में उसी ने संस्कृत साहित्य की गरिमा सबसे पहले घोषित की। उसी के कालिदासीय अभिज्ञान शाकुंतलम के अनुवाद ने संस्कृत और भारत संबंधी यूरोपीयदृष्टि में क्रांति उत्पन्न कर दी। गेटे आदि महान कवि उस अनुवाद से बड़े प्रभावित हुए। कलकत्ते में ही 17 अप्रैल 1794 के इस महापंडित का निधन हुआ।

See also

References

  1. ↑ Alistair Moffat: The British: A Genetic Journey, Birlinn, 2013,ISBN:9781780270753, p.105--107
  2. ↑ Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. Random House. ISBN 9780804153867.p.77
  3. ↑ Edgerton, Franklin (2002) [1936]. "Sir William Jones, 1746-1794". In Sebeok, Thomas A. Portrait of Linguists. Volume 1. Thoemmes Press. pp. 1–17. ISBN 978-1-441-15874-1.p.10
  4. ↑ Alistair Moffat: The British: A Genetic Journey, Birlinn, 2013,ISBN:9781780270753, p.105
  5. ↑ Anthony, David W. (2010). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press. ISBN 1400831105.p.6
  6. ↑ Davis, Samuel; Aris, Michael (1982). Views of Medieval Bhutan: the diary and drawings of Samuel Davis, 1783. Serindia.p.31
  7. ↑ The South Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta, published by the Association for the Preservation of Historical Cemeteries in India, 5th ed., 2009
  8. ↑ Patil, Narendranath B. (2003). The Variegated Plumage: Encounters with Indian Philosophy : a Commemoration Volume in Honour of Pandit Jankinath Kaul "Kamal". Motilal Banarsidass Publications. p. 249.
  9. ↑ Auroux, Sylvain (2000). History of the Language Sciences. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 1156. ISBN 3-11-016735-2.
  10. ↑ Roger Blench Archaeology and Language: methods and issues. In: A Companion To Archaeology. J. Bintliff ed. 52–74. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2004.
  11. ↑ Wheeler, Kip. "The Sanskrit Connection: Keeping Up With the Joneses". Dr.Wheeler's Website.
  12. ↑ Roger Blench Archaeology and Language: methods and issues. In: A Companion To Archaeology. J. Bintliff ed. 52–74. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2004
  13. ↑ Jones, Sir William (1824). Discourses delivered before the Asiatic Society: and miscellaneous papers, on the religion, poetry, literature, etc., of the nations of India. Printed for C. S. Arnold. p. 28.
  14. ↑ Alistair Moffat: The British: A Genetic Journey, Birlinn, 2013,ISBN:9781780270753, p.106-107
  15. ↑ Damen, Mark (2012). "SECTION 7: The Indo-Europeans and Historical Linguistics".
  16. ↑ Bates, Crispin (1995). "Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: the early origins of Indian anthropometry". In Robb, Peter. The Concept of Race in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 231. ISBN 978-0-19-563767-0.
  17. ↑ Singh, Upinder (2004). The discovery of ancient India: early archaeologists and the beginnings of archaeology. Permanent Black. ISBN 9788178240886.p. 9.
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