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LEARNING SANSKRIT IN GERMANY IN GENERAL AND AT LEIPZIG IN PARTICULAR

All students, bright or less bright need orientation in the beginning at universities identifying subjects of interest and identifying sympathetic teachers. The phase of orientation may take even two semesters. In his second semester, Friedrich Maximilian Müller comes to know that Hermann Brockhaus, a new professor at Leipzig, offers Sanskrit Grammar for the very first time at Leipzig University. Before he decides upon his preferences, he attends Hermann Brockhaus as well out of curiosity. Orient, Oriental literature and Oriental languages are progressively becoming attractive not only in Germany. With general “philology”, i.e. Greek and Latin languages, and with German literature he is more or less familiar.

In fact, Friedrich Maximilian Müller could learn only that much of Sanskrit Grammar that Hermann Brockhaus knew and could teach in three months. We did not check whether Hermann Brockhaus ever continued with his grammar course in the following semesters. We know for sure that Friedrich Maximilian Müller’s knowledge of Sanskrit Grammar was restricted to this three-months-course given by Hermann Brockhaus. How many grammar courses do we need learning our vernacular?

From his 3rd. Semester onwards Friedrich Maximilian Müller attended, as dealt in details in the Chapter 4, the following five semester-courses offered by Hermann Brockhaus:

1 Nala Hermann Brockhaus

2 Probodha Chandrodaya Hermann Brockhaus

3 History of Indian Literature Hermann Brockhaus

4 Soma-Deva Hermann Brockhaus

5 Hitopadesa Hermann Brockhaus

It goes without saying that these courses were on narrated episodes and on secondary literature in the Sanskrit language. These courses were at best based on Hermann Brockhaus‘s three-months-grammar-course. And he lectured in the German language. After completing these courses Friedrich Maximilian Müller comes to the conclusion that Hermann Brockhaus’s knowledge was exhausted. In addition, he felt, that was not enough for him. Therefore, he decides to go to Berlin and learn more of the Sanskrit language and more of Sanskrit literature. Franz Bopp happened then to be the topmost Sanskrit scholar, not only in Germany.

Whatever else Max Müller narrates in his autobiography regarding Friedrich Maximilian Müller’s Sanskrit knowledge and love for Sanskrit does not correspond to facts. Moreover, Max Müller contradicts himself. We recall:

“I found little that could rouse my enthusiasm for Greek and Latin literature, and I always required a dose of that to make me work hard. Everything seemed to me to have been done, and there was no virgin soil left to the plough, no ruins on which to try one’s own spade.”

We recall also: “I began to feel that I must know something special, something that no other philosopher knew, and that induced me to learn Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian.”

All this does not sound like a love for the Sanskrit language. Does it? We are caught up again with the cute story presented by Max Müller regarding Friedrich Maximilian Müller’s “first love, Sanskrit and the rest” (p. 109-111). Friedrich Maximilian could not have “remained true to (his) first love, Sanskrit and the rest” before he ended his third semester for the simple reason that Hermann Brockhaus dealt with a Sanskrit text in Summer 1842 only. And whatever Friedrich Maximilian could know about “Sanskrit and the rest”, it has come to him through Hermann Brockhaus.

In the chapter “University” in “My Autobiography” by Max Müller one can read lectures delivered by Max Müller on languages, on Sanskrit, on etymology of words, on ancient gods, on Aryans, and what not. Obviously Friedrich Maximilian could have known nothing of all these from Hermann Brockhaus. The reason is rather simple. We apologise for looking a little ahead. Hermann Brockhaus himself could not have known all these topics, as we shall know in a while.

We get into the biography of Hermann Brockhaus to trace when, where, from whom and for how long he had learnt his Sanskrit language. He was born in 1806 in Amsterdam. He studied “Oriental languages” at the Universities of Leipzig, Göttingen and Bonn. The Universities of Leipzig and Göttingen did not teach the Sanskrit language at that time. In Bonn he was a student of August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767–1835), who was holding a professorship for European Literature. Later he was celebrated as the founder of “German Indology”, who is also said to have known the Sanskrit language. Therefore, we shall have to apply the same method as we applied in the previous case. Whatever Hermann Brockhaus could know about “Sanskrit and the rest”, it came to him through August Wilhelm von Schlegel only. We extend our search to check now the ability of teaching the Sanskrit language of Hermann Brockaus’s teacher. There is no other way out.

August Wilhelm von Schlegel is the elder of the Schlegel brothers. He came to Paris while Franz Bopp was learning “Sanskrit” there. It is handed down that Franz Bopp and August Wilhelm von Schlegel learnt the Sanskrit language together in Paris. We look now into his vita.

August Wilhelm von Schlegel is educated at the Hannover Gymnasium and studies philology at the Göttingen University. As a philologist, he gets engaged in an “ardent study of Dante, Petrarch and Shakespeare”. From 1791 to 1795, he is tutor in a Dutch banker's family at Amsterdam. In 1796, soon after his return to Germany, he settles down in Jena, following an invitation of the German poet Friedrich Schiller. He is now 29 years old.

In Jena, he makes critical contributions to Schiller's journal for literature “Horen”. He translates also from Dante and Shakespeare. These works establish his literary reputation and gain for him an “extraordinary professorship” at the University of Jena in 1798 at the age of 31. With his younger brother Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829), he founds Athenaeum, the organ of the Romantic School of literature in Germany.

After divorcing his wife Karoline, in 1804, he is now 37, he travels with Madame de Staël as adviser in her literary work in France, Germany, Italy and other countries and as tutor to her sons as well. Until he is 46 years old, he remains adviser to her and tutor to her sons. From 1813 to 1817, he acts as secretary of the Crown Prince of Sweden, through whose influence his family gets back the title “von Schlegel”. In 1817, he is 50 years old.

He joins again the household of Mme. de Staël as advisor until her death in the same year. Thereafter he gets a professorship for Literature at the University of Bonn in 1818, and during the remainder of his life, he is occupied chiefly with oriental studies. So it is said. He happens also to be the founder of a “special printing office for Sanskrit” at Bonn. So it is handed down. We assume that he is credited to have created the first facilities in Germany to print texts in Sanskrit letters. We take liberty to look ahead a little in our documentary narration and assert here that printing facilities of Sanskrit texts were available in Kolkata with the British Kingdom represented by the East India Company even before the end of the 18th century. In addition, August Wilhelm von Schlegel was proficient in English.

As mentioned, it is handed down that Franz Bopp guided August Wilhelm von Schlegel to the study of Sanskrit in Paris. We recall what we have read in the autobiography of Max Müller, p. 122: “Here my Collegien Buch breaks off, the fact being that I was preparing to go to Berlin to hear the lectures of Bopp and Schelling.” This “Bopp” is Franz Bopp who went to Paris to learn “Sanskrit” in 1812.

Why to Paris? For how long does Franz Bopp stay in Paris? From whom does he learn Sanskrit and when does he guide August Wilhelm von Schlegel to the study of the Sanskrit language? It must have been before August Wilhelm von Schlegel starts acting as the secretary of the crown prince of Sweden in 1813. So, August Wilhelm von Schlegel could have learnt the Sanskrit language in Paris together with Franz Bopp at best for months only, between 1812 and 1813. Thereafter he had no opportunity to learn Sanskrit. Now we shall have to see how and how much Sanskrit Franz Bopp could have learnt before 1813 ended and then evaluate the quality of his guidance for August Wilhelm von Schlegel. In addition, we have to ascertain to whom Franz Bopp could have guided August Wilhelm von Schlegel to learn the Sanskrit language. Who was the teacher in Paris? Therefore, we are compelled to focus now on Franz Bopp.

*****

For a few years (1808–1814) Aschaffenburg was seat of a university, though not with all faculties, but with history, philology and philosophy. At the age of eighteen, Franz Bopp took up the two years’ “philology course” in 1808 at the Karls–University in Aschaffenburg. This was mainly a study of languages: the Greek, Latin, English, French and Italian. He was said to have been good in his studies, but not good enough. Though at the end of this two years’ “philology course” in 1810 he stood once first and once second in the class, he was unable to earn a “doctor’s degree”. He stood twice as “Defendant” (defender of his dissertation), but the doctor’s degree in philosophy was denied to him finally, unlike the later bishop of Speyer and Augsburg, Richarz, as it is documented. Does it sound like the beginning of an outstanding “scholar”?

His academic teacher Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, a professor of philosophy and history, encouraged his son and Franz Bopp to study “linguistics” at some other University, whatever “linguistics” might then have been. In our simplicity of mind, we first assumed that “linguistics” is a science-based post-philology discipline. Then we looked into the eventual meaning of the word to comprehend that “linguistics” has to do with languages only. Then why cover it with a Latin word? Is it also a deceptive package like “philology”?

Then we started consulting books of reference. The result is enlightening for us. It is a relatively new deceptive package. We won’t go deep into it just now. Only this much here. It is rooted, so it is maintained, in the Sanskrit language and its grammar. Modern scholars of languages have discovered relatively recently that sound and meaning of words are interrelated. The demigods of this discovery are William Jones, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Franz Bopp, Noam Chomsky, etc.. We shall have to deal with the first three demigods later in due course because of their claims of knowing the Sanskrit language.

Now we get back to Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann and to his advising Franz Bopp to study “linguistics” after he failed finally to earn the doctor’s degree at the University of Aschaffenburg. Probably Professor Windischmann was fulfilling his dreams projected in the next generation. Why his dreams? Almost 80 years later Salomon Lefmann (1831–1912), professor of Indology at Heidelberg University, is to hit the nail on the head describing the spirit of that time, which had led to dreams, writing these lines in his book “Franz Bopp, his life and his science, Berlin 1891–1897", (p. 11–12):

“While princes and peoples anxiously following the current events were directing their eyes to France, where a powerful war lord, having taken possession of the inheritance of the revolution, had thence seized power over Germany and Europe, the philosophers and scholars were looking at a Far East and at a far away past. All wisdom and all sciences, all art and culture, had emerged there, there in the Orient, where the cradle of mankind had been. One had to take up oriental issues, study oriental antiquity, oriental philosophy, oriental languages – Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and – was anything impossible – the culture of Egypt, the language and literature of ancient India.

Beside the wonderland Egypt, brought nearer through Napoleon’s campaign, its mysterious priestly wisdom and picture scripts, indeed even more than this and more than any other country of the world India captured the fantasy. What one knew was little, the more what one did believe, both was, however, enough to push the devote enthusiasm of that time and of people to a climax. With the light of dawn, which had then just risen there, a cheerful morning was already shining to them promising the fulfilment of the most beautiful dreams and sentiments.

Since hardly two decades the English people had established their rule in India, had started their pioneering works there. The first reports of the Calcuttan society were received with true enthusiasm; everything that came from there was accepted with faithful reverence, and new revelations about the ‘oldest’ language and wisdom of mankind with boundless longing. A language ‘more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either’, as Sir William Jones said, and yet in near kinship with both...”

As promised, we shall deal with Sir William Jones later. We have read, yes, we had to read repeatedly these lines written by Salomon Lefmann in 1881. Not because of his remarkable style of expressions like: ‘with faithful reverence’ or ‘with boundless longing’. No. We are also not criticising that Salomon Lefmann, as a religious Jew, for his failure to realise that Hebrew and anything Jewish had been excluded from the blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian culture more than half a century earlier. We criticise solely this culture that produced and produce not only “anti-Semitism” but “Salomon Lefmanns” as well.

Even in Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann’s and in Franz Bopp’s lifetime one could have known how cruelly the successors of Columbus had committed genocide and how beastly the massacres in the land of “new revelations about the ‘oldest’ language and wisdom of mankind” performed by the “Vasco da Gamas”, by Portuguese, by Britons, by Dutch and by French heirs. There was no dearth of reports given by eyewitnesses.

How much perversion did it require to write a sentence like: ‘Since hardly two decades the English people had established their rule in India, started their pioneering works there’? And how should one evaluate the fact that this sentence or sentences like this has not been criticised and corrected by even one single renowned poet, writer, theologian, philosopher, scientist belonging to “the wonder that was” this culture prevailing up to our days?

It is absolutely not the case that Salomon Lefmann wasn’t able to formulate critical sentences. What did he write referring to Napoleon? ‘While princes and peoples anxiously following the current events were directing their eyes to France, where a powerful war lord, having taken possession of the inheritance of the revolution, had thence seized power over Germany and Europe, the philosophers and scholars were looking at a Far East and at a far away past.’

We do not wish to raise such questions like: Did people, ordinary people, live in the Orient in those days? Or did anything else exist in the Orient besides riches, ancient wisdom–culture–language, other booties and “the fulfilment of the most beautiful dreams and presentiments” as well? Or, for that matter what is the implicit message in Lefmann’s lines? Does it not imply, rather plainly that without the ‘pioneering works...of the Calcuttan society', without ‘new revelations’ by a William Jones all cultural assets in “India” would have been lost for mankind? Do the cultural assets actually belong to their “discoverers”? Yes?

We are not discussing here all these questions. We don’t wish the descendants of Salomon Lefmann to make him a scapegoat for the intellectual lapses within this culture. We are conscious that scions of this culture have learnt to deny, every responsibility for their atrocities: Crusade, Inquisition, war, genocide in two continents, slave trade, robbery, exploitation, cultural genocide, “anti-Semitism”, annihilation of European Jews, dropping atom bombs, breaking up Palestine, defoliation in Vietnam by dioxin (agent orange), destruction of ancient memorials in Iraq, in Libya and the recent “crusades”. Sorry. Not crusades. The recent moves are “campaigns for democracy”, “campaigns for humanism” of the “civilised international community”. Saturation bombing to prevent “humanitarian disasters” included. Just to indicate the peaks of their criminal activities. The “civilised international community” deny vehemently every responsibility as a matter of principle.

*****

We presently get back to Friedrich Maximilian Müller, to Hermann Brockhaus, to August Wilhelm von Schlegel and to Franz Bopp. The academic mentor, Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, of the young Franz Bopp, has read the book published by Friedrich von Schlegel, the younger of the Schlegel brothers in 1808: Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the language and wisdom of the “Indier”). This is the very first “Indological” publication in the German language. The German Orientalists celebrated it like ‘a new gospel’. Before that, Germany knew nothing about a language called Sanskrit.

Friedrich von Schlegel acquires his knowledge of the Sanskrit language in Paris as well, as it is handed down. We shall deal with him a little later. But there is one question we must raise here and now. Why did nobody at Aschaffenburg consider sending Franz Bopp, first to Friedrich von Schlegel? Where was he in 1812? What has been known about his knowledge of the Sanskrit language? Was Friedrich von Schlegel’s knowledge of Sanskrit not good enough? If it were so, how could he write the book Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier? We shall have to check the quality of his knowledge of “Sanskrit” as well.

Our method of checking, as already stated, is straightforward and simple. We just find out, where, when, from whom and for how long a person has learnt “Sanskrit”, if he claims to have acquired the qualifications of teaching that language called Sanskrit to others.

First we return to Franz Bopp’s vita. Life then is as unpredictable as it is today for the “geniuses”, who are as prone to human follies as they are today. Whilst Franz Bopp realises that there would be no future for him in Aschaffenburg, he meets rather accidentally a restless Orient enthusiast, a young lady called Helmine de Chézy (1783–1856). About this meeting, she is quoted in the Brockhaus encyclopaedia in 1858:

“I found Aschaffenburg in 1812 (unlike 1811) very depressing. Karl von Dalberg was also away; after some time he returned. He was not cheerful. ...There was little intellectual stimulation in Aschaffenburg. Therefore, the acquaintance with Franz Bopp was very welcome to me. He was about to go to Paris in order to learn Persian and Sanskrit from Chézy. In the meantime I taught him to read Persian and many verbs and nouns. Chézy with his flaming heart received him like a father. He opened for him the gates of science and gave his pupil all of his interior treasures.”

In 1812 Franz Bopp is just 21, Helmine de Chézy 29 and Antoine Léonard de Chézy 39. The Chézys are already divorced since 1810. Well! Helmine is actually Wilhelmine von Klenke. Her father a military officer and her mother a poetess. They were divorced early. Wilhelmine grows up ‘under unregulated circumstances’, whatever that might mean. In 1799 she marries Gustav Freiherr von Hastfer at the age of sixteen and divorces after a year. The countess de Genlis invites her in 1801 to Paris. From 1803 to 1807 she edits the journal “französische Miscellen” (French Miscellanea). In 1805 she marries at the age of twenty-two Antoine Léonard de Chézy, a known Orientalist in Paris. He will start teaching Persian in 1807 and later, in 1816, he will become the first Sanskrit professor at the Collège de France at the age of thirty-three, the very first Sanskrit professorship in Europe. We have taken a note of this.

In 1810 she gets separated from Antoine Léonard de Chézy, retains his name, stumbles from one relationship to another, works as a journalist and leads the life of a “liberated women” of that time. She recommends young Franz Bopp to go to Paris, especially because her ex-husband, Antoine Léonard de Chézy, has mastered Sanskrit. But how did 115Antoine Léonard de Chézy learn Sanskrit and from whom? We shall deal with him a little later as well.

*****

Whatever could have happened, but did not, also tells stories; stories about the limited horizon, about the intellectual attitudes of the protagonists of that time, about the patterns of communication, about communication channels and all that goes with it. We must however now stick to Franz Bopp’s facilities of learning the Sanskrit language in Paris of 1812.

The French occupants and missionaries also have plundered indiscriminately in India including manuscripts, books and artefacts without being able to understand their significance. Finally, these booties landed either in the royal library or in the royal museum in Paris. They were somehow sorted and catalogued without knowing what was done. There was none to identify them. There was none to be able to read and discriminate them. France has dragged out more cultural assets from Egypt than from India. A collection of manuscripts and of artefacts in a library generally becomes a watering ground for enthusiasts of all kind, especially if the curator is such a charming “contact-exchange” like Louis Mathieu Langlès (1765 - 1824).

There is an interesting obituary on him by A.J. Mahul in the Annuaire nécrologique, volume VI, 1821– 26. “As an officer’s son Louis Mathieu Langlès gets the job of his father in the Watch-house of the Tribunal of the Marshals of France in Péronne near Mont Didier, in the Picardie on August 23, 1765 after finishing school. Aspiring for a more advantageous career in the colonial service in India he wants to study oriental languages. He is permitted to attend lectures of Caussin de Perceval on Arabic and of Ruffin on Persian at the Collège de France. When he publishes a French translation of Political and military institutions of Tamerlan’ – from an English translation by major Davy – at the age of 22, Marshal de Richelieu, the then dean of the Tribunal of the Marshals of France, sponsors him. He is glad to ensure that the 25 years old “young scholar” of him got one of the twelve scholarships.”

Louis Mathieu Langlès is enthusiastic all right. He does not hesitate to claim to have reconstructed the alphabets of the Tartaric language and cast them in letters for printing. When he publishes them he is accused of plagiarism, because Michel-Ange-André Le Roux’s “Deshauterayes” had already published the same 20 years earlier in the Encyclopédie. Well, Louis Mathieu Langlès could have also got away with it! Isn’t it? Unfortunately for him that someone did have a memory of 20 years.

Louis Mathieu Langlès tries the same exercise with other languages of the orient too. He loves these languages, celebrates them on all occasions, inserts words or characters into his books to draw attention of his readers by the bizarre appearance of those exotic forms, and publishes oriental texts. He contributes to popularise Arabic, Turkish and Persian in France. No one ever wanted to know when, where and from whom he could have learnt those languages.

He submits several memorandums to the National Assembly between 1790 and 1794, ultimately resulting in the setting up of the École des langues orientales vivantes (School for contemporary oriental languages) at the national library in Paris. He is appointed the president and professor for Persian and Malaysian at the age of twenty-nine. But he does not teach these languages there. Why does he not teach these languages there or at all? The reason is not difficult to comprehend. He just does not know them.

In 1792 Louis Mathieu Langlès becomes none the less the curator of the oriental manuscripts at the national library at Paris. Nothing “oriental” is then on in France without him. He publishes a lot. These are translations from English into French. A genuine “Oriental Langlès”. Among the orators at his burial in 1824 is also a representative of the “Asiatick Society” in Kolkata, founded by “Oriental Jones”, i.e. by Sir William Jones.

At the École of the langues orientales vivantes Baron Antoine Issac Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838) is appointed as the first teacher for “Contemporary Oriental Languages”. This is rather a highflying term because in 1795 only Arabic is taught there. From 1806 on Antoine Issac Silvestre de Sacy teaches also Persian. As far as “Oriental Matters” are concerned, nothing else is available there when Franz Bopp arrives in Paris.

We get to know from his first letter from Paris dated January 1, 1813, to his “most honourable friend” Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann (highlighted by us):

“...ever since I am here I am busy only with Arabic, because I was advised to acquire some skill in it before I go for other oriental languages. After gaining some skill in the Arabic I shall begin with Persian, so I hope after 14 days to be able to read light prose in this language; ...Only the Indian languages are not taught here, and nobody studies them. I shall be the only one in the summer, who is engaged with them. I think indeed to begin with Persian and Sanskrit at the same time during the summer. ...Soon I hope to send you some blossoms of Persian and Indian poets in translation, if only my fate be so favourable as to let me be in Paris long enough. Chézy will be able to afford me good services when I begin the Sanskrit. He is the only one, as I hear, who engages in this language here.”

We fail to understand why Franz Bopp does not begin with Sanskrit immediately. The fact that he is advised to learn Arabic first reveals actually the ignorance prevailing in Paris in 1812/1813. Obviously it is assumed that Arabic and Sanskrit are related to each other. We remember it is handed down that Franz Bopp guided August Wilhelm von Schlegel to the study of the Sanskrit language in Paris. How Franz Bopp could do it? He does let us know neither that had he known the Sanskrit language, nor that there were facilities to learn the Sanskrit language in Paris until the summer 1813. We must conclude that August Wilhelm von Schlegel never had an opportunity to learn the Sanskrit language. At most, Franz Bopp had talked to him about “Sanskrit”, after others had talked to him. Therefore, Hermann Brockhaus could have learnt only what August Wilhelm von Schlegel knew from others about and on “Sanskrit”, but definitely not the Sanskrit language. Thus it is comprehensible that Friedrich Maximilian Müller went to Berlin to learn the Sanskrit language.

After this tiny aside, we get back to Franz Bopp in Paris. The following episode is interesting and revealing. In his reply on March 14, 1813 Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann had announced to him:

“I am glad of being able to tell you something pleasant this time: Prof. Othmar Frank, author of “Das Licht vom Orient (The Light from the Orient) & the Commentatio de lingua persica (Comments on Persian) – a man full of deep knowledge wrote to me recently that he will be travelling to Paris on a grant of the Bavarian king to avail himself of the oriental treasures there. The thought came to me as a flash to get the two of you in touch, because you could be useful to each other to the good cause. I wrote therefore to him about you & he will look out for you in the library, where you could also introduce him to M. de Chezy.”

Here is the reaction of Franz Bopp (highlighted by us):

“Don’t you have any news from Frank? He told me he would try to go to England. I cannot assess Frank's knowledge in oriental languages; nevertheless, they do not seem to me to be profound. He did not disclose much in this regard and was anyway very secretive. He started to learn Sanskrit here with me approximately at the same time. He bought the printed Ramayana for the library in Munich on my repeated suggestion, and afterwards he concealed it from me. He also concealed from me that he had got manuscripts from the imperial library. He let me feel altogether a petty jealousy.”

We are at a complete loss for words. But not of our ability to reckon. On March 14, 1813, Othmar Frank was announced. Franz Bopp began to learn Sanskrit approximately simultaneously with him. This could have been in summer 1813 only. Franz Bopp’s next letter we cite to his academic mentor is dated April 29, 1814 is revealing (highlighted by us).

“...I have overcome the first hurdles of the language of Indian wisdom. I see now, to my delight, that I am able to master thoroughly the most beautiful, most important, presumably also one of the most difficult languages of the Orient without any help from others. ... I find that the similarity of Sanskrit with Latin and Greek is very large. This can be extended further than Schlegel (Friedrich von) has done. ...If we had had a great prince or would get one now, I could cherish the hope to get princely support to travel to India, if I succeeded with a smart translation.”

Franz Bopp has developed quite well in his 22 years of age. He claims in the same letter to have already read ‘Bhagawatgita, a small piece with plenty of deep philosophical content, translated by Wilkins into English’. How did he do it? From summer 1813 to the End of April? Was it 10 or just 8 months? The main thing is that he didn’t disclose to his academic teacher who actually was his Sanskrit teacher. His academic teacher didn’t enquire either. Therefore, we too cannot find out who the teacher was.

The reply of his academic mentor of July 22, 1814 is full of congratulations for his “dear friend”. He would also like to get “the catalogue of the Indian manuscripts by Langlès and Hamilton”, so that he could “more exactly indicate” what his pupil “should look into more closely”. He informs him also that he would ask “first our Royal Bavarian Commissioner Freiherr von Aretin, and later the king himself” that Franz Bopp should be given the opportunity “first to go to England and then presumably also to India”. For some years Othmar Frank was not to be mentioned. Remarkable academic morals! Is it any different nowadays? The quality of Franz Bopp’s mobbing appears to be remarkably modern.

We must rummage through the correspondence to put together all the bits of a puzzle to gain a clear picture of how Franz Bopp turns into a Sanskrit scholar. Even before he starts learning the Sanskrit language he already knew: “The German language is so very much suitable to render faithfully the original Indian thoughts. And I want to contribute my utmost that it (Ramayana) can be read in German language. I am already now capable to translate the first part, available in English translation. The second part is said also to appear soon. ... Without a translation, even if it were a very free one, I am unable to translate any Indian manuscript yet, Chézy, either, hardly can, although he is engaged in that 6 years longer.” We note the date July 27, 1814. Accordingly, Antoine Léonard de Chézy must have begun to learn Sanskrit in 1808. But how and from whom? We shall find out in a while.

Franz Bopp comes to Paris in 1812 to learn Sanskrit from Antoine Léonard de Chézy only. Until summer 1813, he doesn’t learn any other language but Arabic. Why? We remember also, the handed-down information in the European scholarly literature is just false that Franz Bopp guided August Wilhelm von Schlegel in Paris to learn Sanskrit. Uncorrected yet. What does it mean? Does it tell any story? We are too simple to understand these inconstancies.

In July 1814 Franz Bopp reports to his academic mentor Windischmann also that he cannot learn Sanskrit from Antoine Léonard de Chézy. But why not? Didn’t he know Sanskrit? Instead of indicating a reason, Franz Bopp maintains that he doesn’t require any teacher for learning the Sanskrit language. Since (highlighted by us):

“Indeed I think, ...when I shall have penetrated well into everything which has been written on Indian mythology in European languages, and if I will then be able to proceed further and to draw from the sources (and what did the others do?), when I shall have become conversant with the philosophical systems of India as well as with that of our fatherland (Vaterland) and that of the Greek, then, dear friend, I will be ready to understand Indian literature without any translation and, if necessary, also without a dictionary.” How revealing!

Franz Bopp has come to know that the Englishmen from Kolkata were planning to bring out a Sanskrit-English-Dictionary in two years. But did he really need it? According to his claims, he mastered Sanskrit characters and their sounds (“their sounds”? How?) so well that he is already thinking of “occupying” them in his own way. How? What did he mean? Well, on July 27, 1814 he explains it to his academic mentor Windischmann:

“...I have worked out an alphabet by which one can reproduce the system of Sanskrit alphabetic characters in a pure form, ... Before I write the grammar, I presumably should make my system of characters known and for this purpose I want to take the Bhagawatgita, the most beautiful parts of which you already know from Schlegel’s (Friedrich von) translation, and publish the (original) text with a very literal translation in Latin, and my brother will probably make the Dewanagari alphabetic characters for a few pages.”

Franz Bopp discloses also his motive behind this undertaking. We read in the same letter dated July 27, 1814:

“Whatever is printed in Calcutta in its original text is so expensive that hardly any individual, who is not very rich, can acquire several volumes without great sacrifices. The 1st volume of Ramayana costs here 160 Francs, the grammar of Carey 280 Francs etc.”

He is concerned about the “price”. He wants to print the original texts so cheap that many Germans could afford them. And in order to fulfil this missionary zeal he wants to “occupy” Sanskrit, take “possession” of Sanskrit, in his own way. He not only feels fit for this purpose, he formulates even his own claim, also on July 27. He establishes his claim basing just upon invented facts:

“One writes the Sanskrit in more than 10 different ways. Every different nation in India has adapted its system of alphabetic characters to the Dewanagari or to the actual Sanskrit system of alphabetic characters, and writes its Sanskrit accordingly. Why shouldn’t we Europeans, whose languages do actually originate from Sanskrit, also adapt our alphabet to that, in order to spread the precious writings of the “Indier” all the more?”

Well why shouldn’t the Europeans even write their own “Sanskrit-literature“ in the next step? This is not just a sarcastic question. We take a note for our memory. This is also a reminder for modern scholars.

Franz Bopp has repeatedly emphasised that he has learnt Sanskrit without any help. All on his own. Absolutely self-taught. But this could only have meant, “Help” from persons as teachers. By this time about half a dozen Sanskrit “grammar guides” were available in Paris. All in English and Franz Bopp knows English, – a grammar by the missionary William Carey (this he himself has referred to), A grammar of the Sungscrit language, Serampore 1804, by Henry Thomas Colebrooke, A grammar of the Sanscrit language, Calcutta 1805, by Charles Wilkins, A grammar of the Sanskrita language, London 1808, and An essay on the principles of Sanskrit grammar. Part I, Calcutta 1810, by “Senior Merchant on the Bengal establishment” H. P. Forster. How was their quality? Our question is more rhetorical. These were the first ventures by persons with little educational training and with questionable intellectual abilities. The quick sequence of the publishing dates indicates not only haste. We shall deal with all these persons in due time.

From a letter of recommendation by Professor Windischmann in 1814 to the Commissioner of the Bavarian government, Baron Aretin, we get also some more information about the period of Franz Bopp’s apprenticeship in Paris:

“I led him by instructions to the myth systems and exquisitely in the large and meaningful teachings of the Indian philosophy (as far as they are known to us from thorough translations) to a better understanding of what he needs to do in order to become most thoroughly acquainted with the language. Now there was no halt; he asked for the sources, and it was no trouble to prompt his father (having six children) to support him, as far as possible, for a few years in Paris. There he has been learning first the difficult Sanskrit language since nearly two years, under instructions of M. Chezy, then Arabic and Persian under the instructions of M. Sylvestre de Sacy to the extent that especially in the first one, only a few will be found in Germany and France equal to him (How should he be able to judge this?). Chezy also felt this soon from this progress of the young man and became a little jealous (How should he be able to ascertain this?); but he did not allow himself to be put off by that. Moreover, when some difficulties were put in his way in the further lending out of books and manuscripts he has copied himself what he needed for his current work in Dewanayhavi (!) letters (which letters?) in the most arduous way to carry on his work without interruption. He was thus forced by need to put together by himself a whole grammar which he ultimately worked through with so much zeal and success that he will be able to publish his own grammar for the general benefit within a year, combined with a collection of the most beautiful spots of Indian poems and teachings; and all these he will get printed in accordance with the Indian text in his own skilfully developed European alphabet system corresponding to the Indian pronunciation (Indian pronunciation? Something like ‘Dewanayhavi’? How should he be able to pronounce any word? He does not get an opportunity of listening to the sounds of the alphabets and of the words.), because Sanskrit letters are so expensive. He has also given me specimens of his translations from the Sanskrit, exactly in the verse measures of the original of the great Indian poem "Ramayana" (of the great Indian poem "Ramayana"?), which bears the same accuracy in dealing with the inner sense and expression as Friedrich Schlegel’s (up to now the only person in Germany who presumably understands Sanskrit).

Much can be expected from such a talent for thorough knowledge of the language and literature which becomes day by day more important for the history of mankind, for the knowledge about the oldest religions, laws and teachings and we Germans should neglect them the less, the more in England great progress is made and professorship is being established in the universities all over (professorship is being established in the universities all over?).

Since the domestic circumstances of the tireless young man do not suffice, however, to support him up to the maturity in this profession and now His Majesty has been pleased to sanction most graciously an adequate grant to meet the needs, so I appeal on behalf of Mr. Bopp that Your Excellency may most kindly take up this matter and lead it to the end, so that our true Indians might soon enjoy the paternal grace of our beloved king and be thus incited to accomplish his work, already begun, with increased zeal and cheerfulness. As far as his actual needs are concerned, these are not considerable. He lived up to now parsimoniously and meagrely and tried to earn what he needed additionally whenever the time allowed him by some extra work. However, as he is hindered by his scarce resources to acquire by his own means the necessary helps for his studies, already available in printed form, having lost far too much time with arduous copying, it is now primarily to be seen to it that he can dedicate his energy undivided to the big objects of his profession and be able to procure himself the necessary aids, among which as the most urgent yet, for example, the edition of Ramayana appeared in Calcutta (in which language?), which, to begin with, he wants to translate completely, then the Sanskrit Chrestomathy by Carrie (by whom?) etc. etc., costing 180 and 140 francs, so I believe un-authoritatively, that, all brought into most precise estimate, 600 guilders would be not too much, to support him during his still necessary stay in Paris. His later transfer to England will then ask for further grace by our sovereign in accordance with the higher prices in that country. Besides this grace the firmest support by the Royal Legation might be necessary to warrant a more free use of the sources. Recommending the whole matter to your favour, I remain in deepest reverence Your Excellency’s most obedient servant Windischmann.”

This document alone, kept in Würzburg-state-archive, manifests the then academic culture in all facets of its factitiousness, as well as of the privileged section of the society. In 1816 in Frankfurt Franz Bopp publishes his book: Über das Konjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenen der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache. Nebst Episoden des Ramayan und Mahabharat in genauen metrischen Übersetzungen aus dem Originaltext und einigen Abschnitten aus den Vedas (On the conjugation system of the Sanskrit language in comparison with that the Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic language. With episodes of Ramayan and Mahabharat in precise metric translations from the original text and with some sections from the Vedas). Edited and prefaced by K. J. Windischmann. This book would have appeared – this is just our impression – also without Franz Bopp’s meeting Antoine Léonard de Chézy. But the issue is: how does Franz Bopp come to know all this between 1812 and 1816? Fantasies? Revelations? And what is right and what is wrong in this book? Who could and who should have checked? There had never been questions like these. And we know: no questions, no answers. This is the wonder that is this culture.

Franz Bopp is now 24 years old. He gets the scholarship. Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann could not have had personal knowledge of anything he has written down as “expert opinion” in his argumentation. He had to believe in the contents of those letters written by Franz Bopp from Paris. We refrain from a comment at this place. We read instead in Franz Bopp’s application in 1816 to get a scholarship for England:

“Royal high commissioner's office! During a four-year stay in Paris I have dedicated myself to the study of oriental languages and literature, particularly the Sanskrit, to the best of my ability, with uninterrupted eagerness. The first two years I covered my maintenance at the expense of my father, a Servant of the Bavarian king, who did not shun the greatest sacrifices to support me, to my best, in order to make me useful for the state and the science regardless of his limited means and humble circumstances. For the last two years His Royal Majesty had gracefully been pleased to grant me highly magnanimously a benefit payment of 600 guilders annually. Though this sum did not suffice to cover the complete costs of my stay in Paris, I considered this most gracious help as the highest luck, because it had enabled me to approach my scientific goals aided by a small support from my father and my consequent austerity and renunciation.

In a book published recently in Frankfurt I sought to show how much my arduous attempts might have been successful. This publication will show the aspect from which I set out to my studies of languages in general and at the same time perhaps also an evidence of the importance of the Sanskrit language and convince of the truth about the great benefit the philologist could draw from the exact knowledge of the same for the scientific understanding of the inner architecture and organism of the languages of the classical antiquity as well as of the still living ones. Which additional benefits might otherwise originate through the knowledge of the treasure of Indian Literature is generally known. Through the knowledge I have been able to acquire painstakingly I feel fit to contribute towards publishing these so far unused sources, if I had the privilege of availing myself furthermore of the big collections of this kind in Paris or even better in London.

A stay of several years in London would be necessary to complete my already started and partly published comparison of languages and to carry out at all my plan to show all languages about which some information is obtainable in regard to their possible kinship with or dissimilarity from each other, to show their inner spirit and essential character and thus to set up a scientifically based system of the general linguistics: an endeavour linked with most important results for the scholars of language and history.”

Instead of 2000 guilders annually for the first two years 1000 guilders were granted on September 30, 1817. For the academic year 1819/1820 Crown Prince Ludwig personally added an allowance of another 1000 guilders. The scholarship was extended for another year.

The stay in London is only a step and was supposed to be a transitional station. He is already dreaming of a stay in India. Of course receiving a grant of Crown Prince Ludwig. Accordingly he writes on August 24, 1815 to Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann:

“In view of the enormous range of the Indian literary works it is difficult to come to some epitome of Indian literature. The poems are like the Egyptian obelisks. The first part of Mahabharata does not reach up to the actual beginning of the poem, it contains as a whole little noteworthy. The year that I shall still stay here I will now completely dedicate to Indian literature, and read so much as possible, in order to know in advance about which issues I shall have to ask Brahmins for advice when I go to India, and I shall be able to do a lot there in a short time.”

His dream is not fulfilled. We do not know whether that Prof. Othmar Frank played a role, who is by now well integrated in the Munich-clique. Franz Bopp, however, was to become a “Pope of Sanskrit” even without ever being in India and before he ever had an opportunity to hearing the sound of the Sanskrit language. In the annals we find him also as the founder of “vergleichende Sprachwissenschaften” (comparative language-sciences). Again, we must confess, we are too simple to understand the difference between comparative language-sciences and Linguistics.

Antoine Léonard de Chézy became in 1816 the first professor for Sanskrit in continental Europe at the age of 33. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, as already mentioned becomes a professor for European Literature in 1818 in Bonn at the age of 53, later claiming to be a professor for Sanskrit as well. The first one in Germany. In 1825, Franz Bopp becomes professor for Sanskrit in Berlin at the age of 34. He was to spread Sanskrit in Europe. He is the same Franz Bopp who saw no future for himself as an academician in 1810.

After becoming professor for Sanskrit in Berlin, he has enriched the wonder that is this culture further as the founder of so-called linguistic science. How does he do it? No questions, no answers. He even publishes six volumes under the title: Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litthauischen, Altslawischen, Gotischen und Deutschen (Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend (Avestan), Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavonic, Gothic and German).

As simple-minded straightforward persons we do not comprehend the benefit for human knowledge comparing languages and their grammars. On top of it Franz Bopp did not know quite a few of these languages. Did he not evolve to a first class swindler? Should we withdraw our question? Do we have to withdraw our question? Whatsoever. We add a remark: Linguistics is going strong since Franz Franz Bopp’s invention.

*****

For the present, however, we must continue our search finding out how the Sanskrit language arrived in Europe. Franz Bopp has claimed to have learnt the Sanskrit language all by himself. No one knows how. The question has not been raised yet. We raise this issue along with a polemic question. Was the knowledge of Sanskrit “revealed” to him while he practised spelling mentally (he had no chance hearing any sound from written letters or words in Sanskrit how it was pronounced) the many robbed Sanskrit manuscripts again and again in the Royal Library in Paris? Whatsoever. We go on with our evaluation of the available documents.

Franz Bopp invents his own grammar and translates Sanskrit texts. At that time in Paris there was only a single person, as reported, who claimed to have known Sanskrit: Antoine Léonard de Chézy. He also claimed to have taught himself. How? How can we know? His Sanskrit was, however, not up to the mark, as reported by Franz Bopp. This was the reason why Franz Bopp had to invent his own learning method. But we have detected two other references: Friedrich von Schlegel and Alexander Hamilton. They were engaged with Sanskrit in Paris even before Antoine Léonard de Chézy.

Getting into these two references we come across documents telling incredible stories. Antoine Léonard de Chézy works in the Egyptian department of the Royal Museum in Paris. The administrators of the artefacts from colonial booty were entitled to “study tours” to Egypt. When in 1803 such a trip is due Antoine Léonard de Chézy falls ill. As luck would have it, however, Louis Mathieu Langlès was there, that “news pool” for “Orient enthusiasts” in Paris. We remember him. So, Antoine Léonard de Chézy learns from the young German Helmine von Hastfer (we remember her too), a friend of Dorothea and Friedrich von Schlegel, who were living temporarily in Paris, that Friedrich von Schlegel takes lessons in Sanskrit from an interned Englishman called Alexander Hamilton.

Friedrich von Schlegel puts it on record that he has learnt Sanskrit from Alexander Hamilton. We shall deal with the quality of the lessons a little later. There is also evidence that Alexander Hamilton and Antoine Léonard de Chézy meet each other in Paris rather frequently. Antoine Léonard de Chézy himself maintains repeatedly that he was not interested in Sanskrit at all and knew nothing about Sanskrit before he met Alexander Hamilton. He was an Egyptologist only.

Hereafter there are two different versions of this small (hi)story within history. One version has it that the great misfortune of missing the study tour to Egypt due to sudden illness was more than compensated by the opportunity to learn Sanskrit from Alexander Hamilton. The other version says the meetings with Alexander Hamilton made him curious about Sanskrit. He learnt the language, however, “secretly” and “by teaching himself” and definitely after Alexander Hamilton had left France.

We remember Franz Bopp’s report to Professor Windischmann according to which Antoine Léonard de Chézy has been engaged with Sanskrit since 1808. But does it really matter? Swindles remain swindles, isn’t it? Even with the best of our efforts, we are unable to understand how a Frenchman in Paris could have learnt a perfectly developed language like the Sanskrit without a teacher, without a grammar and without any help whatsoever. But why complain! “Modern historians” and Indologists have not had and do not have any difficulty so far, in putting up with these incredible stories. They just believe in them. One must develop in this culture the ability to believe and forget the necessity of knowing. Why knowing?

*****

We are now compelled to extend our search. Who is this Alexander Hamilton who brought Franz Bopp, at least indirectly, to Sanskrit and thus contributed to the spread of Sanskrit in Europe? Our search leads us ultimately to the original document and there we read the following lines: “In 1795 (wasn’t it in 1794?) the government of the French Republic founded the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and there Alexander Hamilton (1762–1824), one of the founding members of Asiatic Society of Bengal, held prisoner on parole in France at the end of the Peace of Amiens in 1803, became the first person to teach Sanskrit in Europe.”

Arthur Llewellyn Basham (1914–1986) handed down these lines to the posterity in his best-known book The Wonder that was India, London 1954, p. 6. He wasn’t just an anybody. He wrote quite a few books on the “British colonial period” in India. He was a professor for oriental studies at the university in London, a Mecca for many Indians studying “history” abroad. His senior students occupy almost all leading positions at Indian universities and research institutions for the study of ancient history of Bharatavarsa at present. In return, these disciples have ensured that the “scientific spirit” of Arthur Llewellyn Basham is adhered to in the Republic of India even today.

Arthur Llewellyn Basham does not tell us whether he checked scrupulously the source of his information about Alexander Hamilton. After all, he was writing about a man who lived almost 200 years ago. Obviously he did not check meticulously enough. This is not necessary whenever the information, gathered indiscriminately, serves a useful purpose. Why should he waste time in a meticulous check of sources? Is it not enough, especially after he has made an outstanding career as a “scientist” in the in the blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian culture?

We will rather be busy with Arthur Llewellyn Basham. Nevertheless, there are many others who are out to make career in this “scientific” field. They are prompted by their alpha wolves to detect flaws in the writings of great “scholars” of the past. This is part of a game, called “research in modern science” in this wonder that is this culture.

We came across a publication of the “American Oriental Society”, volume 51 titled “Hamilton Alexander (1762–1824). A Chapter in the early History of Sanskrit Philology, New Haven, Connecticut 1968”. Fourteen years after Arthur Llewellyn Basham published his book: The Wonder that was India, London 1954. A Belgian lady called Rosane Rocher proves that the version about Alexander Hamilton circulated worldwide by Arthur Llewellyn Basham is wrong in some facets. She has written in the “Introduction” of her book:

“It is true that various biographical dictionaries do contain notices about Hamilton, but they often offer erroneous information, as will be seen on more than one occasion below. The reference works about the history of Oriental Studies again and again reproduce the same errors; moreover, they are mainly interested in Hamilton as far as his stay in Paris is concerned; apart from his catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Imperial Library, they essentially refer to him in connection with an apparently more important Orientalist, namely the one who became Hamilton’s most famous student in Paris – Friedrich Schlegel.”

We shall deal with the “wrong facets” in a while. Rosane Rocher starts properly her investigations to trace the origin of Arthur Llewellyn Basham’s error and reports that Theodor Benfey (1809–1881) in his “opus” Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland seit dem Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts mit einem Rückblick auf die Früheren Zeiten (History of linguistics and oriental philology in Germany since the beginning of the 19th century with a retrospect into earlier periods), Munich 1869, pp. 357–361, was responsible for this red herring.

All “scholars” thereafter had just copied Theodor Benfey. After Rosane Rocher made this discovery, she runs out of breath. Or, even worse, she is not interested in finding out how and why Theodor Benfey did write it. She could have asked – we think it is necessary – if it was an “accidental” error. But a scientific discipline and its ethics in this culture did not motivate her enough to look further, to find out how frequent such errors were, whether they were intentional (“malice of intent”) or caused by pressure of work – the rush to publish in a hurry. Therefore, we are still in the dark as to why the German Indologist Theodor Benfey did spread wrong information about Alexander Hamilton. Let us wait and see. We are on look out.

Hadn’t it been so far removed from our search, we would have pursued the matter. Besides, it is not our purpose presently to examine the reliability of sources of current “historical research”, but to describe this wonder-some culture and the way in which celebrated “modern scientists” deal with handed-down sources, secondary sources. Therefore, we must leave this issue unresolved here but also have to admit that we could not suppress a smile seeing this common copy-and-paste practice in all “scientific” books. We apologise for smiling.

We have to deal in depth with Alexander Hamilton because there is no reference that anybody else gave Sanskrit lessons anywhere in Europe before 1803. He was apparently the pioneer in this field. Who is he? How does he acquire his knowledge of the Sanskrit language? How good could have been his lessons actually? Here too, we stick to our simple experience of life: it is more important to know the ‘who’ of the person vis–a–vis is, what he does, by whom he is kept, than to get involved with what he is telling or what others are saying about him.

We are astonished that such an apparently important personality is almost a blank page in books or documents. It is not even on record as to where he died on December 30, 1824, not to talk about the place of his birth. This date of his death is found as an obituary notice in “Gentleman’s Magazine” in England.

As a rule, the importance and the extent of fame of contemporary personalities can be derived from documented references. Does anybody depart from life the way Alexander Hamilton did if he had been such an important personality as late-born “historians” and “Indologists” want to make us believe? Why do they do it? We just cannot accept that Alexander Hamilton was an important personality of his time. In all probability, he is made to be an important personality. But why? What was the necessity? We have to investigate.

As narrated by Helmine de Chézy and Friedrich and Dorothea von SchlegeI Alexander Hamilton was born in a Scottish village. Name unknown. Nothing else is known about his childhood, or anything about his education. They had often been together in Paris, they were friends, in fact, and they had shared a flat and lived as a “commune” for some time. They must have known much more about Alexander Hamilton than they have handed-down to posterity in writing.

Why didn’t they tell us more about him? The most probable explanation is that there was nothing worthwhile narrating about his parents, his childhood, his school days, his upbringing, and his education. He apparently didn’t have a college degree. He doesn’t appear on any Graduate list of the colleges in Great Britain.

The earliest record about him is found in the alphabetical list of all members of the Indian army of 1783. Accordingly, he is recruited as a cadet for the “Bengal Army” in England. The date of his birth is missing, which was not usual. This could be an indication that either his parents died early or that he did not know the exact date of his birth. It is also not known when he comes to Kolkata. This was uncustomary too.

At that time, only a few ships sailed to Kolkata. Usually passenger lists were prepared and filed. Nevertheless, there were passengers and lesser passengers presumably also at that time. He however appears on a list in Kolkata in February 1785 as an ensign of the infantry, the lowest rank of a would be officer in the infantry, and not as a naval officer, as Franz Bopp, Salomon Lefmann, Ernst Windisch (1844–1918) and others have handed-down. Who would like to know how they came to “Naval Officer” and which wishful wrong information they had copied. It was definitely not accidental to vendor wrong information. Naturally, this wrong information is diligently created and spread. Doesn’t “Naval Officer” sound more dignified than an “infantry ensign”? Well!”

This list of February 1785 indicates that Alexander Hamilton arrived in Kolkata not before the 4th quarter of 1784. According to the “Bengal Calendar” on February 22, 1785 and according to the “Calcutta Monthly Register” on March 13, 1785 he joins the infantry. From 1785–1790 he remains a “supernumerary” in the infantry, i.e. the lowest grade in the career to an officer. On February 15, 1790, he becomes permanent: “Ensign Supernumerary to the Establishment, to be brought from the 15th February 1790, on Full Pay and Posted to Corps.”

He couldn’t have been a big shot at that time. His financial means were modest up to February 15, 1790. The “Asiatick Society” was founded on January 15, 1784. It publishes in the first volume of Asiatick Researches a list of all members of the “Asiatick Society” for the first time on January 15, 1789. We shall deal with this Society and all that goes with in later in a separate chapter. On this list he is listed as a lieutenant. How could he be “Lieut. Alexander Hamilton” on January 15, 1789 if he was “Ensign Supernumerary to the Establishment, to be brought from the 15th February 1790, on Full Pay and Posted to Corps?” Is it because an ensign supernumerary was too low in standard for the high honourable society of “colonial scholars” and he was therefore just upgraded?

This list might have tempted Theodor Benfey to promote Alexander Hamilton to a founder member of the “Asiatick Society”. “Founder-members” carry more weight, don’t they? The fact is that he couldn’t be a founder member because he landed in Kolkata approximately a year after the “Asiatick Society” was founded. “Modern historians” and “Indologists” are obviously just carried away to palatability when they narrate and thus becoming swindlers. Who is going to check once it was printed? We know already that celebrities like Arthur Llewellyn Basham didn’t care more about checking before copying former printed products and did not hesitate to tamper documents to transport great visions.

Since 1785, its founder, Sir William Jones, celebrates the “Asiatick Society” at the beginning of every year. He invites all non-Asians in and around Kolkata and those posted elsewhere to his annual “discourses”. He encourages and puts pressure on every “Tom, Dick and Harry” to write field reports. Only non-Asiatic “Tom, Dick and Harry”, of course. He edits and publishes them as learned investigation reports.

Since 1789 the Asiatick Researches comes out annually and are circulated in Great Britain. And from there to the whole of Europe. In none of these volumes is there a mention of Alexander Hamilton. Not to speak about an “enthusiastic Sanskritist” or “Orientalist” Alexander Hamilton. And there is absolutely no indication in later publications that anybody in Kolkata had ever taken notice of Alexander Hamilton. Quite remarkable, isn’t it?

We have taken notice of Alexander Hamilton whilst we rummaged through available documents. On March 4, 1790, Alexander Hamilton submitted an application to the governor general Lord Cornwallis. This application was detected later among Lord Cornwallis’ personal correspondence. We take a note that the application was in the file of personal correspondence. This is the first specimen of the writing quality of Alexander Hamilton. We quote this application here in full:

“My lord.

I beg leave to submit in the most respectful manner to your Lordship’s consideration, a request which I flatter myself will not be deemed unreasonable, when the motives upon which it is founded are considered. A sense of the utility which might be derived from a knowledge of the Sungscrit language, its importance to the political interests of England in this country, and the conviction of that importance discovered by the Court of Directors in their approbation of the ample salary granted to Mr. Wilkins during the crisis of last war to enable him to prosecute that study, as well as in the letter from their Chairman, congratulating that Gentleman on so extraordinary an attainment, encouraged me to engage in a pursuit, where my own inclination was stimulated by so flattering a precedent. The liberal and enlightened policy of the Honble Court could not fail to suggest to them the difficulty of governing a nation, without an intimate acquaintance with its language, religion, laws, manners and customs: and that with respect to the Hindus who constitute the great body of the people, and who from their superiority in mental endowments as well as in industry and number, merit the first consideration, that knowledge is chiefly to be expected from the development of the science contained in their Sacred Language. Whether these, or motives more cogent influenced the Court of Directors I shall not presume to determine; it is sufficient for my purpose to shew by a respectful reference to that document, that it was their wish to encourage the study, and that such a resolution was founded on the wisest principles of policy. A due regard for your Lordship's time will not permit me to encroach on it so far as would be requisite to prove how essentially the knowledge, to which those researches ultimately tend, is connected with the happiness of the subject and the security of property. The importance of the Sungscrit in a political view requires no elucidation, it being the only language universally diffused over every part of Hindustan, by means of which the Bramins of Bengal, Mysore, Guzerat or the Punjab possess a common medium of communication and intercourse, and from which the vernacular dialects of the Provinces do not materially differ. If those observations which I have purposely compressed convince your Lordship of the superior utility of my present pursuits, I may flatter myself I shall experience no difficulty in obtaining a dispensation from military duty at least whilst I continue supernumerary to the Army Establishment. The routine of Garrison duty being altogether incompatible with similar pursuits I may urge my request on different grounds, as the convenience it affords me of indulging my inclination in the research, is my chief if not my sole motive for continuing in a Service, where I have no prospect of attaining beyond the situation of a Subaltern. Should the exemption I most humbly solicit still appear objectionable, I may yet hope your Lordship will not class this application with those which motives of interest or pecuniary convenience may have produced from others. – I have the honour to be. My Lord. Your Lordships most obedt and very humble Servt

A. Hamilton

Calcutta 4th March 1790

P.S. It appears totally superfluous to add that my request does not extend to an exemption from real service, but to the ordinary routine of Garrison duty exclusively.

To

Earl Cornwallis. K. G.”

There is no indication that his application had ever been officially dealt with. From “The Bengal Calendar” and “The Calcutta Monthly Register” of October 1790 we know that:

“Ensign Alexander Hamilton, having received permission to resign the service, at his own request, his name is struck off the list of the army.”

At the end of 1790, the 2nd volume of Asiatick Researches came out. Therein, also the 2nd membership list of the “Asiatic Society”. Instead of “Lieut. Alexander Hamilton” we read now “Alexander Hamilton. Esq.”. Once again, we take the note that he couldn’t have become a Lieutenant if he was permitted to resign the service later as “Ensign Alexander Hamilton”. But these are in fact trifles and still venial sins of “modern history” as a science, as we shall see. “The Bengal Calendar and Almanac” of 1792 did not include, quite logically, the name Alexander Hamilton any more on the list of the military. On the list of the British “civilians”, there is no Alexander Hamilton. What can be concluded from these facts? Anything else than that he had left Bengal? The modern history as a science is however more imaginative.

The language in the application reveals that Alexander Hamilton is shaky, grammatically insufficient and weak in expressions. Where and when could Alexander Hamilton have learned good writing? In the beginning of the 1780s, he is about 20 years old. Probably he has only a simple school education. He does not have any profession yet. Young people with good professional training didn’t generally join the colonial army. It was then sufficiently known that soldiers died early in subtropical India, if they did not die on the voyage itself. They generally didn’t return rich, if they did return at all.

In all probability, Alexander Hamilton does not have much of a choice in Kolkata. Being an ensign, he learns the craft of a soldier who is generally more used to getting orders than to express himself in talking, not to mention in writing. At the end of 1784 he lands in Bengal, doesn’t earn full pay for five long years and remains an ensign.

The life of a soldier doesn’t suit him. He doesn’t see a future in the army. As an ensign, he has to deal with locally recruited mercenaries. He is a mediator between non-English speaking ordinary soldiers and the British officers. Five years in this position might have enabled him to acquire the language of the local soldiers a little more than officers needed it.

Doing this job, he might have discovered his affinity to the local language more than to his duty of an ensign. By 1790, he becomes aware that even with full pay he would continue to be just a ‘Subaltern’ in the infantry. In view of this despairing perspective, he looks out for a “more civilian” work. “Historians” and biographers should have taken note of the real situation. How could an ensign – who was not even on his full salary – afford an Indian “Pandit” (learned persons) to learn the Sanskrit language? Besides, doesn’t the shaky simple English with grammatical and syntactic errors in his application speak for itself?

We have read his application repeatedly in order to be fair to Alexander Hamilton. He doesn’t show off, he is not a cheat, he is not a swindler. In his simplicity, he just becomes a victim of “gossips” on and about Charles Wilkins, that he made a remarkable career only because he had learned the Sanskrit language. And on ‘ample Salary', of course. Europeans in India were money obsessed. So, all those on top there would draw ‚ample Salary’.

We shall deal also with Charles Wilkins in due course. Alexander Hamilton couldn’t possibly have known Charles Wilkins personally in Kolkata. Otherwise he wouldn’t have referred to him wrongly, nor repeatedly referred to ‘court of Directors’, ‘ample Salary’, ‘crisis of last war’, ‘enable him to prosecute that study’, ‘letter from their Chairman’ ,‘congratulating that gentleman’ in connection with Charles Wilkins. These were rather rumours in the air after Charles Wilkins had left Kolkata in 1786.

It is indeed remarkable that Alexander Hamilton did not apply for “funds” for his study of “Sanskrit” – learning the Sanskrit language without private teachers (Pandits) was not feasible – and, applied only to be freed from ordinary routine service. He wanted to take the burden of the private teacher himself. Or he didn’t know yet that he needed a private teacher to learn the Sanskrit language. Does that mean something? What does it mean?

In October 1790, he leaves the army. We are unable to judge whether his decision to leave the army was desperate or courageous or triggered by some realistic desire for a “more civilian” life. The resignation meant also no regular earnings. What does he do? What could he do?

It is certain that he does not get a job as a “writer”, nor works for a business subsidiary in Bengal. In such a case, his name would have been listed in one of the various “registers” in Kolkata. It is beyond doubt that he had not been a regular resident of Kolkata since 1792. If he stayed in India, he would have appeared in one of the “registers” for sure. This is not the case. The other issue is that there is no evidence showing that he returned to England. Does that mean something? What does it mean?

*****

Helmine von Hastfer, we remember her, lived in 1803 in the house of Dorothea and Friedrich von Schlegel in Paris. Alexander Hamilton lived there too. Rosane Rocher, the only biographer of Alexander Hamilton, has tried to establish with the help of two quotations by Helmine de Chèzy that Alexander Hamilton was married in Kolkata (p. 10):

“In an often quoted passage from her autobiography (p. 270, 2nd volume, Leipzig 1858), she says: ‘The famous Indianist Hamilton who lived many years long in East India and had a native woman as wife and a hopeful son there.’ But she gives much more detailed information in one of her other writings, which is less known (p.86, Freihafen III, 4, 1840): ‘His heart had remained in India, where tender, holy bond made him happy for thirteen years long, he had taken a native for marriage, and a son of her, often he spoke of his bond with this sweet creature, with that, I would like to say, ashamedly emotion and tenderness, which was like an emblem of authenticity of a deep feeling.’”

Rosane Rocher takes these two quotations to construct that Alexander Hamilton was married for 13 years, before he left India. Then she applies her skill and art of reckoning. He could not have reached India before the end of 1783, she maintains. Thereafter he needed some time to marry an Indian woman, so Rosane Rocher. Then she concludes with her inimitable precision that he could not have left India before 1797. We could better quote Rosane Rocher than arouse suspicions that we are distorting her writing (p. 10):

”The important element in this passage is that, according to Helmine von Chezy, Hamilton would have been married for thirteen years before he left India. Assuming that he could not have come to India before the end of 1783 (Why 1783? What should he have done in Kolkata without resources before he became ensign at the beginning of 1785? She does not put these or similar questions.), and allowing some time before he decided to marry an Indian woman, one may conclude that he cannot have left India before the year 1797. It is the more interesting to arrive at the year 1797 as the terminus post quem for his departure from India, because the year 1797 at the same time is the terminus post quem given by another source for his arrival in Edinburgh. Indeed, according to a statement of Lord Cockburn: ‘In particular, between 1797 and 1800, some conspicuous young men had come to Edinburgh, to whom, being strangers, the merits of Jeffrey were more apparent than they hitherto had been to many of those among whom he dwelt. Some of these have been already named in mentioning the Speculative Society ... In addition to these were Lord Webb Seymour, Mr. Sydney Smith and Mr. Hamilton, also strangers.’”

We don’t feel an urge to raise here our standard question whether Rosane Rocher cared to check how Lord Cockburn arrived at this conclusion in 1852. However, we must confess that we are dumbfounded by these acrobatics. We read the quotations of Helmine de Chézy again and again to find the alleged statement that Alexander Hamilton had lived together with his Indian wife for thirteen years and had left behind a grown up son. It may be, we don’t possess enough fantasy not to read again and again the simple statement: Alexander Hamilton missed his native wife and his son also after 13 years and he kept them in memory. Accordingly, he, most probably, had to leave behind his “wife” and son in 1791 or 1792 in India. This wouldn’t be a singular case. It was a question of material survival. The left–behinds did get a name too, the “Anglo-Indians”. Rosane Rocher could also have wondered as we do, why Alexander Hamilton didn’t call his family to Great Britain after he became a “great and famous scholar”.

We are also astonished to note how insolently “history” is being forged. Rosane Rocher completed this “reconstruction” in the first ten pages of her book of 128 pages. Then on pages 11–33 under the subtitle: “Great Britain: The first publications” she ascribed to Alexander Hamilton as many anonymous articles published in the Edinburgh Review and in Asiatic Annual Register as she needed to make in a learned way a great and famous scholar out of him. In the following pages wondrous metamorphoses occur. All shaky speculations and forgeries connected with his biography become hard facts. Not only for Rosane Rocher who dealt in the pages 11 ff. with “facts” only.

That was just what other “historiographers” were waiting for. A classic example of how (hi)stories are “made” in the “wonder that is” modern scientific culture. We mean example and not a singular case of making “scholar extraordinary”.

Hard to believe, but unfortunately true. We read on page 33 of that well-known book that appeared in 1997 in the University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London. Title: Aryans and British India. Author: Thomas R. Trautmann, a professor at the University of Michigan, a favourite pupil of the renowned “historian” Arthur Llewellyn Basham (highlighted by us):

“...the Orientalist Alexander Hamilton reviews A journey from Madras, through the countries Mysore, Canara and Malabar, whose author, Francis Buchanan, ‘possessed no means of communication with the natives but through an interpreter’ ...”

On page 110: “Several of the new Orientalists, such as Alexander Hamilton and Sir John Shore, had Indian wives, and it cannot but have helped them to develop a fluency, if not in Sanskrit or Persian, at least in Hindustani and other modern languages.”

Sir John Shore hasn’t mentioned Alexander Hamilton at all in his 13 volumes on Sir William Jones published in 1804. We continue reading Thomas R. Trautmann, a favourite pupil of the renowned “historian” Arthur Llewellyn Basham. Page 115:

“Alexander Hamilton, member of the, Asiatic Society and retired officer of the East India Company’s army, became, by virtue of his appointment to the East India College, the first Sanskritist to hold a professorship in an institution of higher learning in Europe.”

On page 138–139: “Alexander Hamilton, the first Sanskrit professor in Britain (at the East India College), became the conduit by which knowledge of Sanskrit passed from Calcutta to Paris and thence to Germany. Hamilton, who had served as an officer in the army of the East India Company, learned Sanskrit in Calcutta and became a member of the Asiatic Society (did he learn Sanskrit before he became a member?); in 1790 he had petitioned the government for facilities to study Sanskrit. He resigned his commission and returned to Britain in 1796, where he lived off the proceeds of journalism, writing for the Monthly Review for a time, and then for the Edinburgh Review, of which he was one of the founders (Thomas R. Trautmann is capable of wondrous fantasies, isn’t he?). By the peace of Amiens (25. March 1802) hostilities between Britain and Napoleonic France were suspended, and Hamilton like many other Britons, took the opportunity to travel to France, only to become a prisoner of war by the decree of 23 May 1803, when war resumed. Hamilton was however treated most liberally by the French authorities, being allowed to live wherever he liked in Paris and to move about freely. He spent the time in the company of Orientalists, especially Louis Mathieu Langlès, with whom he collaborated in cataloguing the Indian manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which service was probably the reason of his liberty. He also taught Sanskrit to a few students, of whom the most notable was Friedrich Schlegel, whose Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier” (On the language and wisdom of the Indians, 1808) had a vast effect in fomenting German Indomania and Sanskrit study. Schlegel’s brother August Wilhelm Schlegel later repaired to Paris to study Sanskrit, going on to become the first professor of Sanskrit in Germany (1818), and his student (Thomas R. Trautmann’s wonder-some discovery!) Franz Bopp also went to Paris for Sanskrit study, as did Friedrich Max Mueller somewhat later.”

Why do we meet swindlers only? A forgery of history par excellence. We are not dealing with singular cases. In this area, we are yet to find a singular case of academic correctness and honesty. We assume that our findings are only a peak of the general dirty morass.

We are still dealing with the same Alexander Hamilton who wrote that application. Thomas R. Trautmann doesn’t run any risk spreading eloquently false (hi)stories. After all, he is a “renowned historian” with “profound knowledge” in anthropology too. Anthropology is that branch of “science” which followed the “philology” to which we owe “racism”.

And if the false presentations get exposed, nothing will happen to Thomas R. Trautmann. Because here he makes a footnote to shun off his responsibility. Though, this is his first remark relating to Alexander Hamilton: “For the information in this paragraph I rely on Rosane Rocher’s biography (1968) and article (1970) on Hamilton, and on Jane Rendall’s work on the Scottish Enlightenment.” A fine state of affairs, isn’t it?

Later on page 148–149 he quotes Alexander Hamilton more than once. These are quotes from Edinburgh Review, from articles ascribed to him by Rosane Rocher. Here are a few samples of how nicely they are presented:

“Hamilton embraced Colebrooke’s (We shall deal with Colebrooke also, but in due course in a later chapter.) unity of origin theory and deployed it in his Edinburgh Review piece...

He believed it not improbable that the Brahmins entered India as conquerors...

He thought however that the Paiśāci or demons’ language spoken of by the ancient Indian grammarians was totally distinct from the Sanskrit in its origin...that one great nation formerly peopled Hindustan, and were driven, by invaders, to those hilly countries which they still occupy. (Hamilton 1808:93).”

Statements of this category are, leniently spoken, products at best of sick fantasy. Again extremely leniently spoken, such statements express cultural prejudices of the writers of their culture rather than the chronicler reports of a Megasthenes. However, for the “scholars” like “Thomas R. Trautmanns” any printed word in the Edinburgh Review or anywhere else is a “reliable” source. And it is a rather cheap trick when he just refers to quotations in brackets like: (Hamilton 1808:93). In this case, it is a no-named article in the Edinburgh Review. What do these “Thomas R. Trautmanns” and “Arthur Llewellyn Bashams” do when they do not find the needed printed words for their “scholarly” deliberations? We leave this question unanswered, but keep it in memory.

Thomas R. Trautmann continues (p. 149)

“Jones, in his eighth discourse, had spoken of the Indian mountaineers as ‘many races of wild people with more or less of that pristine ferocity, which induced their ancestors to secede from the civilised inhabitants of the plains and valleys.’ He thought they sprang from the old Indian stem, although some of them soon intermixed ‘with the first ramblers from Tartary, whose language seems to have been the basis of that now spoken by the Moguls’ (Jones 1807, 3:172–173). Hamiltons proposal of the unitary language and aboriginal character of all the ‘mountaineers’ goes considerably further than this. But taken all together, the testimony of Jones, Colebrooke and Hamilton is that British belief in the ethnological and linguistic unity of India was never complete.”

How did Sir William Jones come to know all these? Sources? Is there any need ask for sources? Is there any need of sources? Are not ‘Jones, Colebrooke and Hamilton’ enough? We are dumbfounded, indeed.

Thomas R. Trautmann has decorated his book Aryans and British India with a dedication: “In memory of A. L. Basham, British Sanskritist, historian of India, guru, friend”. We remember the blessings Arthur Llewellyn Basham brought us at the beginning of this chapter:

“In 1795 the government of the French Republic founded the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and there Alexander Hamilton (1762- 1824), one of the founding members of Asiatic Society of Bengal, held prisoner on parole in France at the end of the Peace of Amiens in 1803, became the first person to teach Sanskrit in Europe.”

*****

The whole scenario of these celebrated scholars seems to be a dirty morass of darkness, dishonesty and deception. Recent “scholars” attribute Alexander Hamilton the lofty height of powerful language like that of Francis Jefferey, Sydney Smith and Henry Brougham. However, there is not a single essay bearing his name. We recall his application dated March 4, 1790. Our imaginative capacity fails absolutely to grasp how and where he could have improved the quality of his writing. Was he not battling for physical survival, compelled to desert his wife and son?

It just doesn’t enter into our head why Alexander Hamilton didn’t write a single “scholarly discourse” after he ascended as an expert on oriental questions to the editorial team of the Edinburgh Review? Not even after having become a “Professor of Sanskrit” (Sorry. There is no document in the archives on his being a “Professor of Sanskrit”.). He published merely his Terms of Sanskrit Grammar in 1814. Charles Wilkins published in 1815 The Radicals of the Sanskrita Language. Scholarly pieces? Both of them were rather copying intermediaries. In the style of beginners.

Alexander Hamilton’s involuntary Parisian intermezzo tells also many stories like his application of March 4, 1790. It is remarkable that some stories went round in Paris, which was unknown in Edinburgh. Lord Cockburn only knew that: "Mr. Hamilton was a Scot, was in India, an easy to get along with person of small stature, excellent in the conversation and great expert of oriental literature.” Or that in the inner circle he was also called“Sanskrit Hamilton” or “Pandit”.

In Paris remarkable stories went round. Alexander Hamilton had lived long years in India and was the master of oriental languages including Sanskrit. He belonged to the excellent scholar group of Sir William Jones. He had lived long in Bengal with Brahmins. As a Sanskrit scholar, he ranked equally with Charles Wilkins and William Jones and so forth. Who did have have these stories to do the rounds in Paris? Obviously, Alexander Hamilton had lost his innocence of March 4, 1790. In Paris, he seized the opportunity and placed himself in the centre of Orientalists who knew not much more beyond Egypt but did hear a lot about Sanskrit literature from India.

For his “career” in Paris Louis Mathieu Langlès was the key figure. We remember. Louis Mathieu Langlès is in charge of the oriental manuscripts in the royal library. He published a lot, yet is not regarded as a scholar. His original contributions are restricted to footnotes. Mainly he translates English texts into French. How he came to know Alexander Hamilton is not known. But the fact remains that he marketed Alexander Hamilton quite effectively in Paris and thereby himself as well. It is said that he always discussed his translations of oriental manuscripts from English to French with Alexander Hamilton. But the strange thing is that Alexander Hamilton does not speak any French. Louis Mathieu Langlès never forgets to immortalise his footnotes by reference to his discussions with the great scholar Alexander Hamilton. He is keen to get those “Bengali” and“Sanskrit” manuscripts (We do not know how the great Orient fan could discriminate these two languages) from India under his administration into a “systematic” catalogue organised by Alexander Hamilton.

This does happen. Alexander Hamilton sorts out the manuscripts, provides explanatory notes in English and Louis Mathieu Langlès makes the French version. He writes in the catalogue:

“I translated it into French and added to a large number of essays more or less extensive remarks. Some of these remarks were provided by Alexander Hamilton himself, the others resulted from ‘Recherches Asiatiques’, from my own footnotes to the French translation of the first two volumes of this erudite collection, (i.e.) the works of Mr Jones, the English translation of Indian laws by Mr Colebrooke, from the works of padre Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomeo and from other oriental manuscripts of the Imperial Library.” (Translated from original French.)

Well, once again, the crux of the matter is that Louis Mathieu Langlès was unable to judge the quality of Alexander Hamilton’s work. In fact, no one in Europe could. And Alexander Hamilton could not read French. Louis Mathieu Langlès was not interested in learning Indian languages, but he propagated Alexander Hamilton in Parisian parlours. He made it possible for Alexander Hamilton to teach “Sanskrit” in Paris. As life would have it, Dorothea and Friedrich von Schlegel lived there for a short while, because Friedrich von Schlegel, 32 years old, wanted to learn oriental languages. Why in Paris? “... because the richest collections of literature in oriental languages are stored there.”

How this collection was connected with the learning of oriental languages? We have raised this question. We are enormously surprised. It goes like this:

Take a translated version and the original book. It doesn’t matter whether this translated version is also a translation from a translated version. It can be a repeatedly translated version. The main thing is that one has some vague ideas about the contents of the original book. Now the guessing acrobatics begin. To put it mildly: This was the time of literate acrobats and salespeople.

“The Schlegels” had rented a large floor at a reasonable price. They didn’t have enough money. They had planned to sublet furnished rooms. On January 15, 1803, Friedrich writes to his elder brother August Wilhelm (We remember him. He taught Hermann Brockhaus Sanskrit in Bonn, so it is said.): “The grammar of the ordinary Indian languages (Which ones? How should he know them?) I have acquired already (how?); but the Sanskrit I shall be able to begin in the spring only. Because the libraries are not being heated.”

Isn’t it interesting? Friedrich von Schlegel also gets inkling about the collection in the royal library in Paris, as did Alexander Hamilton. On May 15, 1803, he reports to his brother on a lucky coincidence:

“I am perfectly fine. Because I learnt much, very much. I have not only made progress in Persian, but I am also nearing my great objective, that I master Sanskrit. I will be able to read the Sakontala within four months in its original text, though I will presumably still need the translation. Enormous effort was required because of a great complication and I had to develop my own method of guessing (Divinierens); since I had to learn the elements without elementary books. I was finally fortunate that an Englishman called Hamilton, the only one in Europe except for Wilkins who knows, and very thoroughly knows, could at least help me with advice.”

We couldn’t have described this adventurous method of learning the Sanskrit language more vividly. Friedrich invents this wonder-some method to learn this classical ancient language. And in just three months, on August 14, 1803, Friedrich lets his brother August Wilhelm know:

“I worked through Sanskrit uninterruptedly and now I have achieved a sound fundament. I have by now at least a hand high Manuscripts there which I copied. Now I am occupied in copying the 2nd encyclopaedia. Writing Sanskrit daily for 3–4 hours and another one or two hours to work through with Hamilton; and whenever in the evening I felt like it, I had still work for 2–3 hours.”

We try to understand the procedure. Friedrich von Schlegel made handwritten copies of Sanskrit texts and worked them through with Alexander Hamilton who seemingly knew the characters a little better. How did it function? How could it function? “Scholars” of our time do not explain it to us. They just assert.

*****

As already said, the Schlegels had to sublet furnished rooms. Thus, something like a “flat sharing community” emerged. And Alexander Hamilton was there. This is just imponderability of life! We know, again from a letter of Friedrich to his brother August Wilhelm dated November 26, 1803:

“I live now quite pleasantly here – as pleasant as it can be abroad. Since several months Hamilton lives with me, who was my teacher for Sanskrit; also Hagemann, a young Hanoverian, who is not only proficient in Greek and Arabic, but also knows a lot of and very thoroughly Persian, is our house mate. In addition there are three young men from Cologne taking private lessons from me. Thus I have a pleasant society in the house.”

The three inhabitants from Cologne were: Sulpiz and Melchior Boisserée as well as Johann Baptist Bertram. “From the Schlegel–circle” there is also a mention in the autobiography of Sulpiz Boisserée:

“The house community at Schlegel’s included, beside the great expert of Sanskrit, A. Hamilton, a small German colony; to which belonged the ten years old son of Mrs. Schlegel, Phillip Veit, a young philologist Hagemann from Hanover who studied Sanskrit too, we three friends from Cologne and Mrs. von Hastfer from Berlin who had come to Paris with Mrs. von Genlis and was editing the French Miscellanea for Cotta in Tuebingen. Usually only Hagemann and Mrs. von Hastfer joined us at the table.”

Friedrich von Schlegel was learning Persian from Antoine Léonard de Chèzy. Louis Mathieu Langlès brings Alexander Hamilton and the Schlegels together. Alexander Hamilton starts living with the Schlegels. Helmine von Hastfer lives there also. Soon she was to marry Antoine Léonard de Chézy. Friedrich von Schlegel learns Sanskrit from Alexander Hamilton from May to November 1803. The Schlegels leave Paris at the end of April 1804. Friedrich von Schlegel publishes the book: On the language and the wisdom of the Indians, Heidelberg 1808. Our impression is, he would have written this book even if he had not met Alexander Hamilton. This book will remain his only contribution to “Indology”. However a significant one. Alexander Hamilton became famous because of this book. His brother August Wilhelm (1767–1845) was also inspired by it.

*****

And: Those who actually had spread Sanskrit in Europe, Antoine Léonard de Chézy and Franz Bopp claimed to have mastered the Sanskrit language without ever listening to the original sound of the language, without ever seeing the original gestures of the people while reciting the texts. On top of it, they also said that they taught the Sanskrit language themselves – who knows how. These two persons, who are known to have spread a language named Sanskrit, could at best learn the alphabets and composition of the letters in words and only on papers in writing. They did not care nor had any opportunity to be in India. The only person who got an opportunity to listen to the sound of Sanskrit, under the assumption Alexander Hamilton could pronounce the words in “Sanskrit”, was Friedrich von Schlegel, he writes a book in 1808 and then exits from the scene. He does not teach anybody “Sanskrit”.

These “scholars” want us to believe that they just turned to Sanskrit texts and could read and understand. The characters were still unknown to them. These “scholars” must have been suffering from dementia or even worse. They did not remember their laborious efforts of learning their own vernacular.

But, as we mentioned earlier, the first four Sanskrit grammar guides in English were available in Paris: by missionary William Carey (1804), by Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1805), by Charles Wilkins (1808) and by senior merchant H. P. Forster (1810). Now we know how a language called Sanskrit, is brought to and spread in Europe. Is it still the original Sanskrit and not a kind of “Pidgin Sanskrit”? We must admit that we are extremely confused. “Pidgin Sanskrit” would mean just badly articulated Sanskrit. We understand that it was much worse.

*****

Now we come down from Alexander Hamiltion, Friedrich von Schlegel, Antoine Léonard de Chézy, Franz Bopp, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Hermann Brockhaus to Friedrich Maximilian Müller. None of them had learnt the Sanskrit language. We come down to those wonder-some years from 1803 to 1844. How much “Sanskrit” Friedrich Maximilian Müller could have learnt from Hermann Brockhaus at Leipzig? He attended courses only up to the end of the summer term, i.e., till July 1843.

The alphabets of the language called Sanskrit, some Texts in Sanskrit original, their translated versions Persian, Arabic and English, a few rudimentary grammar books were available in Germany. Nothing more. For Friedrich Maximilian Müller it was less. He did not have access to the English language. He might have read Friedrich von Schlegel’s book: On the language and the wisdom of the Indians, Heidelberg 1808. He did not mention to have read this book.

Friedrich Maximilian Müller is done at Leipzig University. He goes to Berlin: “My wish to go to Berlin arose partly from a desire to hear Bopp, but yet more from a desire to make the acquaintances of Schelling.” Franz Bopp is considered to be the pope of Sanskrit in Europe.

In this chapter we have documented our first run to ascertain how much of “Sanskrit” was available in Germany that could be learnt at most by Friedrich Maximilian Müller. We shall have to continue our search to find out how, when, by whom the Sanskrit language is brought to Europe and which Sanskrit language does actually arrive to Europe in our later chapters in due course.

Looking a little ahead, we have also dealt with “scholars” of our time who wanted us to believe that Alexander Hamilton brings Sanskrit from India to Paris in 1803. We know by now whatever these “scholars” wanted us to believe on, about and of the Sanskrit language does not corresponds to facts. These are just myths. No, it is worse. These are just deliberate lies.

As logical continuation of our search, we shall have to accompany Friedrich Maximilian Müller to Berlin in his quest to learn the Sanskrit language. We must ascertain here that he does not acquire any of the qualifications at Leipzig University that will justify his deliberations in his book published in 1859: A HISTORY OF ANCIENT SANSKRIT LITERATURE SO FAR AS IT ILLUSTRATES THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE BRAHMINS.

We can wait and watch where and how Friedrich Maximilian Müller acquires those qualifications.