RECENT PEOGRESS OF SANSKRIT STUDIES. 257 



ever, only from the last quarter of the last century, when it began to attract the 

 notice of Englishmen in Calcutta. In the course of the inquiries instituted by 

 British statesmen, immediately after the conquest of Bengal, into the condition of 

 the remarkable people who had fallen under English sway, and into the means of 

 promoting their good government and welfare, attention was speedily directed to 

 their sacred language and literature, as the main source from which authentic and 

 satisfactory information must be drawn in regard to their laws and institutions ; 

 and more especially, as the Government had adopted the equitable principle that 

 the civil rights of the Hindus should be adjudicated according to their own laws, 

 it was soon perceived to be necessary that these laws should be studied in the 

 original sources. The first step taken for this purpose was to procure a compila- 

 tion from the principal institutes of Indian jurisprudence, which was drawn up by 

 native jurists. This was next translated into Persian, at that time the language 

 of public business in Bengal ; and from this version an English translation was 

 formed by Mr Halhed, and published in 1776. Not content with knowledge 

 thus obtained at second hand, Sir William Jones, Judge of the Supreme Court 

 of Judicature, who had been distinguished before his arrival in India by his 

 attainments in other branches of Oriental literature, devoted himself to the study 

 of Sanskrit, and rendered the Institutes of Manu from that language into Eng- 

 lish. This work was published at Calcutta in 1794. The Indian studies of Sir 

 William Jones were not, however, by any means confined to the subject of juris- 

 prudence, but extended to Sanskrit literature generally ; and he was the first to 

 draw attention to the Indian drama, one of the most beautiful productions of 

 which, the Sakuntala, he translated. This translation was published in 1789. 

 The Bhagavad Gita, a philosophical, or rather a theosophic, episode from the 

 great epic poem the Mahabharata, had been published at even an earlier date 

 by Mr, afterwards Sir Charles, Wilkins, to whom we also owe a valuable San- 

 skrit grammar, which appeared in 1808.* 



The next great name in Sanskrit literature is that of Mr H. T. Colebrooke, who 

 made many most important contributions to our knowledge of the Vedas, of 

 Hindu law, poetry, algebra, astronomy, and finally, of the Indian philosophical 

 systems. These contributions, to some of which I shall have occasion to return 

 further on, were commenced in 1795, and continued till 1827.t The late Mr 

 H. H. Wilson, Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford, first came 



* The first grammar of Sanskrit in a European language was publislied by a Carmelite monk, 

 JoHANN Philip Wesdin, better known as Paulinus a Santo Bartholom^o, at Ilome, in 1790. See 

 Muller's " Lectures on the Science of Language," p. 149 ; also Professor Wilson's paper in the 

 *' Proceedings of the Philological Society," vol. i. p. 1 6, where it is said that a second, more copious 

 and correct, grammar was published by Paulinus n 1804. 



I For an account of Mr Colebrooke's career, see the Notices of his Life by his son, Sir E. T. 

 Colebrooke, the present ]M.P. for Lanarkshire, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. IX., 

 for August 1838. 



VOL. XXIII. PART II. 4 B 



