Indian Antiquary Vol 27

SR No.: 032519
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 404
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 363

DECEMBER, 1899.)
IN MEMORIAM GEORGE BÜHLER.
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specimens of it from an earlier time may well be discovered yet, if these researches are carried on as he wished them to be carried on, in a truly systematic manner. In this field of research Bühler will be most missed, for though absent from India he had many friends there, particularly in the Government, who would gladly have listened to his suggestions. One may regret hig departure from a country where his services were so valuable and so much appreciated. I have not dwelt at all in this place on the valuable services which he rendered as inspector of schools and examiner, but I may state that I received several times the thanks of the Governor of the Bombay Presidency, the late Sir Bartle Frere, for having sent out snch excellent scholars as Bühler and others. Unfortunately his health made it imperative for him to return to his own country, but he was soon so much restored under a German sky that he seemed to begin a new life as Professor at Vienna. If he could not discover new MSS. there, he could digest the materials which he had collected, and he did so with anflagging industry. Nay, in addition to all his own work, he undertook to superintend and edit an Encyclopaedia of Indo-Aryan Philology which was to be a résumé up to date of all that was known of the languages, dialects, grammars, dictionaries, and the ancient alphabets of India; which was to give an account of Indian literature, history, geography, ethnography, jurisprudence; and finally, to present a picture of Indian religion, mythology, philosophy, astromomy, mathematics, and music, so far as they are known at present. No one knows what an amount of clerical work and what a loss of time such a superintendence involves for a scholar who has his hands full of his own work, how much reading of manuscripts, how much letter-writing, how much protracted and often disagreeable discussion it entails. But Bühler, with rare self-denial, did not shrink from this drudgery, and his work will certainly prove extremely useful to all futare Indo-Aryan students One thing only one may regret - that the limits of each contribution are so narrow, and that several of the contributors had no time to give as much more of their own original work. But this is a defect inherent in all encyclopædias or manuals, unless they are to grow into a forest of volumes like the Allgemeine Encyclopedie der Wissenschaften und Künste by Ersch, begun in 1831 and as yet far from being finished. 'Under Bühler's guidance we might have expected the completion of his Encyclopædia within a reasonable time, and I am glad to hear that his arrangements were so far advanced that other hands will now be easily able to finish it, and that it may remain, like Lassen's Alterthumskunde, 1847-1861, a lasting monument of the lifelong labours of one of the most learned, the most high-minded and large-hearted among the Oriental scholars whom it has been my good fortune to know in the course of my long life.
ON PROFESSOR BÜHLER.
BY C. H. TAWNEY, C.I.E.1 The death of Professor J. G. Bübler, came as a terrible shock to his numerous friends in England. It appears that he left Vienna on the 5th of April, 1898, to pay a visit to his wife and son, aged sixteen years, who were staying with relations at Zürich. He broke his journey at Lindau on the lake of Constance. Being an expert oarsman, he was tempted by the fine weather on Good Friday, the 8th April, to take a trip alone in a small rowing boat down the lake. He was last seen about 7 p. m. on that day. It is surmised that he lost an oar and in attempting to recover it, overbalanced the boat, which was apparently very crank, and so was drowned. The boat was found floating bottom upwards, but no one had any idea who had been in it. As Professor Bühler had evidently intended to surprise his family in Zürich with his visit, and had therefore given no hint of his movements, they continued to correspond with him at his address in Vienna and were much distressed at receiving no answer. Meanwhile the proprietor of the Hotel in which he was staying, finding that he did not return, communicated with the police, and enquiries were at once set on foot. It was not ascertained that the occupant of the boat was Professor Bühler of Vienna, until the 15th April, when the melancholy tidings reached his wife in Zürich. The body has never been recovered.
Reprinted from Luzac's Oriental List.