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 365

DECEMBER, 1893.)
IN MEMORIAM GEORGE BÜHLER.
857
ancient North Semitic letters, and his contribution on Indian Palaeography (with nine tables) to the Indo-Aryra Encyclopædia. The latter treatise is so complete that it is difficult to imagine that it can be ever superseded or supplemented. His loss as editor of this Encyclopedia will be widely felt. He was most active as & decipherer of Indian inscriptions to the last, and took a lively interest in the archeological investigations of Doctors Haltzsch, Führer, Waddell and others,
Professor Bühler was a most painstaking teacher. He tatight the Sanskrit language in Vienna even from the Alphabet, the letters of which he drew on a black board for his less advanced class. He was always ready to help any serious student, and averse sometimes to having his assistance acknowledged. In fact, his distinguishing moral quality was unselfishness. He was perhaps hardly conscious himself to what an extent he carried this virtue. His manners were genial and unassuming. He was always in his element in the society of cultivated Englishmen. Before devoting himself to the classical language of India, he had been thoroughly disciplined in Greek and Latin. He was well acquainted with the modern languages of Europe and particularly with English. He could read with ease the most difficult English authors, and composed fluently in that language. It was these qualities that enabled him to give such a powerful impulse to Sanskrit scholarship both in India and Europe. Nor was his influence confined to the old world. He certainly counted among his pupils one native, at least, of the United States. His work will long survive not only in the books that he has written, but in the interests and capacities that he has created and trained.
PROFESSOR BÜHLER.
BY CECIL BENDALL EVERY practical student of Indian learning must have heard with consternation of the death, by a boating accident in the Lake of Constance shortly before Easter, of Hofrath Johann Georg Bühler, Professor of Sanskrit at Vienna, and for many years a prominent member of the Bombay Educational Service.
Born in 1837 at Berstel in Hanover, he studied Sanskrit under the leading Sanskritist of the last generation, Theodor Benfey. Bähler was Benfey's joy and pride. I remember Bühler once describing to me his embarrassment because old Benfey insisted on kissing him on a public occasion. Bühler made early acquaintance with England, visiting this country for the study of Indian MSS., working for a time in the library of Windsor Castle, and also assisting Prof. Max Müller in the index to his Ancient Sanskrit Literature. In 1863, mainly through the influence of the last-named scholar, he joined the Bombay Educational Service, holding successively the Professorship of Sanskrit at Elphinstone College, Bombay, and an Inspectorship of Schools in Gujarat. He did excellent work in both capacities.
It is due to the critical scholarship and personal influence of men like Bühler and Kielhorn that the best native scholarship of the Bombay side" is at least half a century ahead of the rest of India. And yet the rulers of India have decreed that native instruction in Sanskrit is strong enough to run alone, and the race of such European teachers is to become extinct ! One wishes there were a few men on Indian Councils capable of feeling the force of remarks like those of Böhtlingk (the greatest living lexicographer) on the last Sanskrit dictionary by Bengali scholars. But to return to Bühler. In bis educational tours he collected and published statistics of private libraries of MSS. These researches culminated in his great tour in Kasmir in 1875, where he made discoveries of anprecedented importance in the literary history of India. Returning to Europe in 1880, he was at once appointed to the Chair of Sanskrit at Vienna, which he occupied till his death.
1 From the Atheneum, No. 3678, April 23, 1898.