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DECEMBER, 1898.1 IN MEMORIAM GEORGE BUHLER.
His intimate acquaintance with manuscripts and inscriptions naturally made Bühler a first rate authority on all questions of paleography. When Prof. Max Müller published the famous specimens of ancient Indian writing found in Japan, he requested Bühler to discuss the paleographical importance of the new finds, and his paleographical remarks form a most valuable appendix to the texts edited by Prof. Max Müller (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan Series, 1, 3). Only three years ago Bühler published a most valuable contribution to the history of Indian writing in his essay On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet' (Indian Studiese No. III., Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien, 1895), — a second revised edition of which, together with two Appendices on the Origin of the Kharoshthi Alphabet and of the so-called Letter-Numerals of the Brâhm? (with three plates), appeared almost simultaneously with the distressing news of the author's death. And two years ago he published, as part of his Encyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research, a most exhaustive treatise on Indian palæography (Indische Paleographie, with seventeen tables and map) of which an English translation, happily still written by Bühler himself, is now in the press and will be published before long.
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But there is hardly any branch of Indian Philology and Archeology, in which Bühler has not done pioneer work, on which his extensive knowledge has not thrown new and unex. pected light. It is true that his writings are more concerned with classical Sanskrit literature than with the Veda, yet we owe to him most important discoveries of MSS. belonging to the Atharva-veda and to the Yajurveda, and he took the greatest interest in all questions of Vedic philology. He sympathised with those Vedic scholars who (like Prof. Ludwig or Prof. Pischel) see in the Veda, first of all, a product of the Indian mind which can only be rightly understood in connection with the rest of the Indian literature. But above all he was interested (and here we see again the historian ) in the history of the Vedic schools, and he never ceased to hope that with the help of inscriptions it would be possible to gain information about the development of the different Vedic schools, their spread over various parts of India, and their age, and in time also about the vexed question as to the age of the Veda itself, i. e., of individual Vedic works.
These questions as to the age and geographical distribution of the Vedic schools were discussed by Bühler on several occasions in connection with his investigations into the history of the Indian Law-books, a branch of Sanskrit literature in which, again, we owe to Bühler real pioneer work. Beyond the law books of Manu and Yajnavalkya and some modern Commen taries and Digests, little was known, before Bühler, about the oldest legal literature in India, To Bühler (whose labours in this direction have been most successfully continued by Prof. Jolly) we owe our acquaintance with the most ancient Hindu law books, the Dharmasútras. As early as 1867 he wrote his important introduction, Sources of the Hindu Law, to Sir Raymond West's Digest of the Hindu Law of Inheritance, Partition, and Adoption, of which a third edition appeared in 1884. In this introduction he gave, for the first time, a concise but complete survey of the Hindu law literature. In 1868 and 1871 he published an edition of one of the oldest Hindu law books, the Aphorisms on the Sacred Laws of the Hindus, by Apastamba, - the first critical edition of a work of that kind. A second edition of this work appeared a few years ago (1892-94) in the Bombay Sanskrit Series. For Prof. Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East he translated the oldest and most important Hindu law books in two volumes The Sacred Laws of the Aryas (Vols. II. and XIV. of the series; a second edition of Vol. II appeared last year). These translations were chiefly made from MSS. discovered by Bühler himself. Editions of the texts have since been published by various scholars. The introductions to these two volumes contain highly important investigations concerning the age of the works translated, and their relation to one another. In 1886 Bühler translated the law book of Manu, the most popular of all Hindu law books, for the same series (The Laws of Manu, Vol. XXV. of the Sacred Books of the East). This volume contains not only an excellent translation of the work, but also extensive extracts from the numerous commentaries, and
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