SCHLEGEL, Friedrich.

Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Ein Beitrag zur Begründung der Alterthumskunde ... Nebst metrischen Uebersetzungen indischer Gedichte.

Heidelberg, Mohr and Zimmer, 1808. 8vo, pp. xvi, 324; a very good, clean copy in German contemporary half sheep gilt, spine gilt with red morocco lettering-piece, marbled paper boards, a little rubbed. Rare first edition of the work often considered as the initiator of comparative philology. Schlegel left Germany for Paris in 1802, his chief aim being the study of Oriental languages, especially Persian and Sanskrit, and found a teacher there in Alexander Hamilton. It was during these years that Schlegel prepared the present work. He was one of the first of a tradition of Indo-European comparative philologists in nineteenth-century Germany and is credited with the invention of the term ‘vergleichende Grammatik’.‘The real unfolding of the blossoming buds of the comparative study of language was made possible, as is well known, by the introduction of Sanskrit into Western cultural circles. Though he was not the first to introduce it, and by no means the best informed scholar, the Romantic writer Fr. Schlegel had the farthest reaching effect with his little book Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (Heidelberg, 1808). In any case it was decisive for the direction that [Franz] Bopp’s studies were to take. This “brilliant overture”, as Benfey calls it, looks upon “Indian” as the pure original model of language development. “Im Indischen”, according to Schlegel’s literal statement, “jede Wurzel ist wahrhaft das, was der Name sagt, und wie ein lebendiger Keim, denn weil die Verhältnisbegriffe durch innere Veränderung bezeichnet werden, so ist der Entfaltung freier Spielraum gegeben…” (pp. 50-51). No external, mechanical additions: Sanskrit is a truly “organic” language and this is its glory’ (Thomas A. Sebeok, ed, Portraits of linguistics, Greenwood Press, 1976, pp. 226-7)Goedeke VI, 23, 29; Wilpert/Gühring 16.

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