48 Obituary notice of Dr. Bohtlingh. [May, 



On the 1st April last, there occurred at Leipsic, in the high age of 

 nearly 89 years, tlie death of one of the last surviving pioneers of Sans- 

 krit studies in Europe, Dr. Otto von Bohtlingk. Having completed his 

 University studies at his native town, St. Petersburg, he went to Berlin 

 and then to Bonn, at that time the leading University in Germany for 

 Sanskrit Philology. Here he studied under Schlegel and Lassen, and 

 first entered the arena of independent workers with a masterly edition 

 and translation of Kalidasa's Sakuntala. This was soon followed by 

 an edition of Panini, the first that appeared in Europe, which was 

 essential for placing the study of Sanskrit in Europe in its beginning 

 upon a sound, critical basis. After returning to St. Petersburg, 

 Bohtlingk was soon appointed a member of the Imperial Russian 

 Academy of Science, a post which he held during his life- time, and 

 which enabled him to devote all his time to scientific work, without be- 

 ing bound down by other official duties. A catalogue of his publications, 

 which fills some eight or ten pages in print, shows how well he has used 

 the leisure thus afforded to him. Having been a member of the 

 St. Petersburg Academy for 25 years, he was, under the rules of that 

 corporation, allowed to reside outside of Russia, and he first chose the 

 small German University town of Jena as his residence, which he after- 

 wards transferred to Leipsic, where he lived up to his death. 



His monumentum aere perennius consists of the two great Sanskrit 

 Dictionaries, of which he was the chief compiler, and which now gener- 

 ally go under the name of the St. Petersburg Dictionaries. Bohtlingk's 

 name will always survive in the history of Sanskrit Philology as that 

 of its first great lexicographer. Planned at the outset of that science, 

 when the enormous mass of Sanskrit literature existed almost entirely in 

 manuscripts, the work could not have been brought to a successful end 

 without that persevering energy, which formed such a marked trait in 

 the character of the late great scholar. Witness of this are the ten 

 stately volumes of the great and small St. Petersburg Dictionary, a real 

 mine of treasure, indispensible to any serious worker in that field of 

 research. There is scarcely any independent earlier work in Sanskrit 

 or Comparative Philology, the author of which does not gratefully ac- 

 knowledge his indebtedness to the St. Petersburg Dictionary. The 

 compilation of such a monumental work covered a period of 85 years. 

 In the great Dictionary Roth contributed the Vedic matter, while epic 

 and classical Sanskrit was the domain of Bohtlingk. Chief among other 

 contributors were Aufrecht, Kern, Schiefner, Stenzler and Weber. The 

 small Dictionary is primarily a compendium of the larger one, without the 

 quotations, but contains also such additional matter, as had come to 

 light in the meantime. 



