Jain Journal 1998 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 45

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JAIN JOURNAL : Vol-XXXIII, No. 2 October 1998 Though the first philological investigation of the Vedas started by the publication of Rosen's The First Astaka of the Rgveda in 1838, the foundation of the Vedic studies in Europe was laid by Eugène Burnouf who was a teacher at the Collège de France in the early forties of the 19th century. He had two brilliant pupils-Rudolph Roth and Friedrich Max Müller-both of them introduced Vedic studies in Germany. Rudolph Roth by his book Zur litteratur und Geschichte des Weda ("On the literature and history of the Veda") published in 1846 created a burning zeal for the investigation into the various branches of Vedic studies among his pupils devoted to him. So also Friedrich Max Müller, another celebrated pupil of Burnouf, who contemplated a project on publishing the Rgveda with the commentary of Sāyana. The whole project was completed between 1849 and 1875 (a second improved edition was published in 1890-1892). But before Max Müller's edition was completed, Theodor Aufrecht had published his handy edition of the complete text of the Rgveda in Roman script between 1861 and 1863. Both the latter scholars had rendered invaluable services to the scholarly world and the actual research on the Vedas was started by the publication of these Vedic texts.
The chief event in the history of Sanskrit research in the second half of the 19th century was the publication of the Sanskrit-Wöterbuch compiled by Otto Böhtlingk and Rudolph Roth and published by the Academy of Arts and Sciences in St. Petersburg in seven folio volumes in the years 1852 and 1875. This Dictionary is a brilliant monument to German industry and scholarship. Though later on, we have Sanskrit Dictionaries by Horace Hayman Wilson, Carl Cappeller, F. Max Müller and Theodore Benfey and Monier-Williams, none had surpassed the St. Petersburg's Sanskrit Dictionary.
In this way, the different branches of Sanskrit literature, the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata, the Puraņas, the Kāvyas, dramas, epics, grammar, lexicography, religious and philosophical texts, the texts on the Ayurvedas and many others were ransacked and the ancient hidden treasures were unfurled to the scholarly world. The Sanskrit language and literature as a vehicle of human knowledge was established in the ocean of knowledge of mankind.
6. Research in Modern Sanskrit literature
In modern times some modern Sanskrit scholars from Bengal, Bihar and Delhi prepared their doctoral dissertations on some modern Sanskrit poets, such as, MM. Haridāsa Siddhāntavāgisa, MM. Kalipada Tarkācārya, Pandit Sri Visveśvara Vidyābhūşaņa, Pandit Sri Srījiva Nyāyatirtha and others. They normally worked on the life and works