Indian Antiquary Vol 23

SR No.: 032515
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 412
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 16 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
in his latest work. I must confess to belonging to the opposite camp, but that fact need not prevent a humble opponent from casting one more wreath on the tomb of one of the greatest Sanskrit scholars whom the Western world has known.
William Dwight Whitney was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, on the 9th of February 1827. He studied at Williams College, where he took his degree in 1845. He then spent three years as a clerk in a bank, which uncongenial occupation he gave up in 1849 to serve as assistant in the United States Geological Survey. In the autumn of the same year he went to Vale, where he continued the study of Sanskrit which he had commenced in 1848. In 1850, he visited Germany, where he spent some years in Berlin and Tübingen at the feet of Profs. Weber and Roth. It was at the latter place that he laid the foundations of that reputation for industry and accuracy which ever subsequently distinguished him. He returned to America in 1853, and in 1854 became Professor of Sanskrit at Yale, a post which he held during the remainder of his life. Shortly after his appointment he published the first volume (containing the text) of his well known edition of the Atharva Vêda, the second volume of which, comprising translation and notes, he had nearly completed at the time of his death forty years after the publication of the first. The appearance of this first volume fixed the course of Sanskrit scholarship in America. Under Whitney's tuition, and encouraged by the example of his unflagging industry, a school of Vedic students rapidly sprung up round his chair, from which have issued many valuable works, bearing the double impress of German solidity and care for minutiæ, coupled with American originality and grasp of general principles. Whitney himself directed his researches to the Atharva Vêda and in due course scholars hailed with admiration and gratitude his Atharva Véda Prátiéákhya (1362), and, in 1881, his Index Verborum of the Atharva Véda. In the interval, he had also issued an edition of the Taittiriya Prátiédkhya in 1871.
In 1879 Prof. Whitney broke new ground by the publication of his Sanskrit Grammar, in which he definitely took his stand, not on the grammar as handed down by Panini and his successors, but on the grammar as revealed by Sanskrit Literature itself. Few works have provoked so much controversy as this revolutionary challenge of the Yale Professor. Sanskrit scholars soon became divided into three camps: the extreme Papineans, according to whom, whatever the old grammarian said was true, and whatever he had
[SEPTEMBER, 1894.
not said was "not" grammatical "knowledge;" the extreme Whitneyites who denied that grammatical salvation could be found in the Gospel of Papini, and that the actual usage of Sanskrit literature was the only possible guide; and the Moderates, who while not binding themselves to
everything that Pâini laid down, believed that he knew more about the Sanskrit of his time than the most learned Europeans of the nineteenth century, and that till every Sanskrit text in exist. ence had been published and analysed, it would be impossible to ascertain what the actual usage of the literary language was. Whitney's Grammar was thus only a grammar of the Sanskrit Literature to which Whitney had access, and nothing bears stronger testimony alike to the depth and to the wide extent of his learning, than the admirable practical completeness of this work as a whole.
Besides the above greater works Whitney had time to write several minor essays. These were subsequently collected and published in his Language and the Study of Language (1867), and Oriental and Linguistic Studies (1873-74). Like everything else that he did, these shew the same impress of perspicuity and mastery of details. He followed his own line, and not seldom was engaged in controversy, which though sometimes conducted with acrimony, was always noteworthy for fairness and a love of truth.
In subjects outside the range of Oriental scholarship, he is best known as the author of Essentials of English Grammar, and as Editorin-chief of the Century Dictionary of the English Language.
For the past eight or nine years Prof. Whitney had been suffering from a serious disorder of the heart. His disease did not interrupt his life work, and he laboured to the end, which came at New Haven on the 7th of June, 1894.
During his busy life he received many honours. He was Honorary Member of all the great Oriental Societies, and was a member or correspondent of the Academies of Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Rome (the Lincei), and of the Institut of France. He was also a Foreign Knight of the Prussian Order" pour le mérite" for Science and Arte, filling the vacancy caused by the death of Thomas Carlyle. Many Universities conferred honorary degrees on him, and these only served as illustrations of the universal respect and affection in which this scholar, as simple-minded as he was distinguished, was held by the members of the great brotherhood of Oriental scholarship. G. A. G.