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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1898.
A scholar's life is best written in his own books; and though I have promised to write a biographical notice for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, in which he took so warm and active an interest, I have to confess that of the personal circumstances of my old friend, Dr. Bühler, I have but little to say. What I know of him are his books and pamphlets as they came out in rapid succession, and were always sent to me by their author. Our long and never interrupted friendship was chiefly literary, and for many years had to be carried on by correspondence only. He was a man who, when once one knew him, was always the same. He had his heart in the right place, and there was no mistaking his words. He never spoke differently to different people, for, like a brave and honest man, he had the courage of his opinions. He thought what he said, he never thought what he ought to say. He belonged to no clique, he did not even try to found what is called a school. He had many papils, followers, and admirers, but they know but too well that though he praised them and helped them on whenever he could, he detested nothing more than to be praised by his pupils in return. It was another charming feature of his character that he never forgot any kindness, however small, which one had rendered him. He was kritajña, memor facti, in the real sense of the word. I had been able, at the very beginning of his career, to render him a small service by obtaining for him an appointment in India. He never forgot it, and wbenever there was an opportunity he proved his sincere attachment to me by ever so many small, but not therefore less valuable, acts of kindness. We always exchanged our books and our views on every subject that occupied our interest in Sanskrit scholarship, and thoagh we sometimes differed, we always kept in touch. We agreed thoroughly on one point that it did not matter who was right, hut only what was right. Most of the work that had to be done by Sanskrit scholars in the past, and will have to be done for some time to come, is necessarily pioneer work, and pioneers must hold together even though they are separate, at times while reconnoitring in different directions. Bühler could hold his own with great pertinacity; but he never forgot that in the progress of knowledge the left foot is as essential as the right. No one, however, was more willing to confessa mistake than he was when he saw that he had been in the wrong. He was, in fact, one of the few scholars with whom it was a real pleasure to differ, because he was always straightforward, and because there was nothing astute, mean or selfish in him, whether he defended the Purvapaksha, the Uttara-paksba, or the Siddhanta.
Of the circumetances of his life, all I know is that he was the son of a clergyman, that he was born at Borstel, 19th July, 1837, near Nienburg, in the then kingdom of Hanover, that he frequented the public school at Hanover, and at 1855 went to the University of Göttingen. The professors who chiefly taught and influenced him there were Sauppe, E. Cartius, Ewald, and Benfey. For tbe last he felt a well-deserved and almost enthusiastic admiration. He was no doubt Benfey's greatest pupil, and we can best onderstand his own work if we remember in what school he was brought up. After taking his degree in 1858 he went to Paris, London, and Oxford, in order to copy and collate Sanskrit and chiefly Vedic MSS. It was in London and Oxford that our acquaintance, and very soon our friendship, began. I quickly recognized in him the worthy pupil of Benfey. He had learnt how to distinguish between what was truly important in Sanskřit literature and what was not, and from an early time had fixed his attention chiefly on its historical aspects. It was the fashion for a time to imagine that if one had learnt Sanskrit grammar, and was able to construe a few texts that had been published and translated before, one was a Sanskrit scholar, Bithler looked upon this kind of scholarship as good enough for the vulgus profanum, but no one was a real scholar in his eyes who could not stand on his own feet, and fight his own way through new texts and commentaries, who could pot publish what had not been published before, who could not translate what had not been translated before. Mistakes were, of course, unavoidable in this kind of pioneering work, or what is called original research, but such mistakes are no disgrace to a scholar, but rather an honour. Where should we be but for the mistakes of Bopp and Burnouf, of Champollion and Talbot P
