Oriental Jones and the `discovery' of Sanskrit

The discovery by Sir William Jones and other orientalists that Sanskrit was probably related to European languages, but in a genetic relationship that involved descent from a common source that `perhaps no longer exist[ed]' certainly changed the `Orientalist' equation, no matter what critics of Orientalism might say. Sanskrit became a language that was no longer inherently exotic or `oriental', but a language with deep affinities with European classical and modern languages. It became a sister language, rather than a subaltern language, and its `discovery' had direct impetus for the development of historical and comparative linguistics, and modern linguistics in general. It spurred inquiry into the genetic relationships of the daughter (and `grand-daughter') languages of Sanskrit by scholars and missionary-grammarians of all sorts, which perhaps raised as many questions as it solved. It encouraged efforts to standardize and modernize Indian vernaculars for use in the administration of the East India Company (and post-Mutiny, of British India), and it legitimized the status and aspirations of certain languages and discouraged the hopes of others, as linguists were forced to make decisions of various sorts about what were `real' languages and what were `mere dialects'.

One must not assume, however, that the `Orientalists' (now much reviled by critics from post-modern and subaltern studies) were to carry the day on language policy in India. Though Jones and others praised Sanskrit for its ``wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either" (de Bary et al. 1958(2):38) these sentiments were not shared by the Anglicists who came later.