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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1898.
Professor Bühler was born at Berstel near Nienburg in Hannover. He was educated at the University of Göttingen and studied Sanskrit under Professor Benfey, for whose scholarship he always retained an enthusiastic admiration, and took his Doctor's degree in the year 1858. He passed many years in the Bombay educational service (1863-1880), and thus came to acquire great familiarity with Gujarati and Marathi and also the power of speaking Sansksit fluently, an accomplishment which impressed considerably the pandits of lower Bengal. The famous Sanskrit scholar Mahamahopadhyâya Mahesa Chandra Nyâyaratna carried on an animated conversation with him in Sanskrit in the hearing of the writer of the present notice.
Professor Bühler possessed a sympathy with Indian thought and feeling, and a knowledge of native customs and the obvious everyday facts of native life, which removed him from the list of dryasdust Sanskrit Scholars, and entitled him to be styled rather an Indianist of a very wide range of acquirements. While in Bombay, he paid great attention to the study of Indian Law. Of this the book, which he brought out in connection with Sir Raymond West in 1867 and 1869 on the Hinda Law of Inheritance and Partition, is an abiding monument. He subsequently returned to this study and produced the Sacred Law of the Aryas as taught in the schools of Âpastamba, Gautama, Vasishtha, and Baudhayana, in the Sacred Books of the East Series (Oxford, 1879, 1882). In 1886 he translated the Laws of Mann for the same series.
Professor Bühler was well read in Sanskrit Philosophy, though we cannot call to mind any work that he wrote in connection with the orthodox systems. In Belles Lettres (Kávya) he was thoroughly at home. It was a pleasure to hear him unravel the intricacies of a difficult stanza, constructed, as too many Sanskrit stanzas are, for the express purpose of displaying the recondite learning of the author. In this field he edited four books of the Panchatantra in the Bombay Sanskrit Series, which was originally brought out under the superintendence of himself and Professor Kielhorn. Of these books many editions have appeared. He edited for the same series the first part of the Dasakumdracharita of Dandin. The second part was edited by Professor Peterson. Professor Bühler considered the style of this author in the admittedly genuine portions, as the highest flight of Sanskrit prose.
In 1875 he edited the Vikramánkadevacharita of Bilbapa, a historical work written in ornate Sanskrit, from a single MS. copied by himself and Professor Jacobi in seven days. This brings us to the distinguishing feature of Professor Bühler's Sanskrit scholarship. No one has done more for the elucidation of the Hindu period of Indian History. By means of his papers on Indian inscriptions in the Indian Antiquary and elswhere he has ostablished the history and chronology of that period on a secure basis. Of the knowledge thus acquired he made a memorable use in his article on the Indische Kunstpoesie" which appeared in 1890. In this paper he shews from an examination of dated inscriptions and other sources, that the ornate style of classical Sanskrit poetry and poetical prose was in fall bloom in the second century of the Christian era. The wide-reaching consequences of this demonstration are at once apparent. In fact this short paper revolutionised the views of Sanskřit scholars with Yegard to the date of important branches of Indian literature. Other historical writings of Professor Bühler are his pamphlets on the Suksitasamkirtana of Arisimha, on the Jaina monk Hemachandra and the Navasáhaslinkacharita, the latter brought out in co-operation with Professor Zachariae,
His knowledge of Jaing literature and of living Jaina teachers was extensive. It may be assured that his love of history gave him a particular sympatby with Jainas, as some of the best medieval chronicles of I:dia appear to have belonged to that " Darsana." His short treatise “Ueber die Indische Secte der Jaina," which appeared in 1887, is perhaps the best account of that somewhat neglected sect. It is much to be regretted that it has never been translated into English.
The ripest fruit of his epigraphic studies is to be found in his English pamphlet on the origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet, in which he derived those characters from the most
