A full seventy years have passed since Sir William Jones published his translation of Sakuntală, a work which may fairly be considered a starting point of Sanskrit philology. The first appearance of this beautiful specimen of dramatic art created at the time a sensation throughout Europe, and the most rapturous praise was bestowed upon it by men of high authority in matters of taste. At the same time, the attention of the historian, the philologist, and the philosopher was roused to the fact that a complete literature had been preserved in India, which promised to open a new leaf in the ancient history of mankind and deserved to become the object of serious study. And although the enthusiasm with which works like Śakuntalā were at first received by all who took an interest in literary curiosities could scarcely be expected to last, the real and scientific interest excited by the language, literature, philosophy, and antiquities of India has lasted and has been increasing ever since. England, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Greece have each contributed their share towards the advancement of Sanskrit Philology, and names like those of Sir W. Jones, Colebrooke, Wilson, in England, Burnouf in France, the two Schlegels, W. von Humboldt, Bopp, and Lassen, in Germany, have secured to this branch of modern scholarship a firm standing and a universal reputation. The number of books that have been published by Sanskrit scholars in the course of the last seventy years is small. 3 Those works, however, represent large and definite results, important not only in)' their bearing on Indian antiquities, but, as giving birth to a new system of Comparative Philology, of the highest possible importance to philology in general.4 In little more than half a century, Sanskrit has gained its proper place in the republic of learning, side by side with Greek and Latin. The privileges that these two languages enjoy in the educational system of modern Europe will scarcely ever be shared by Sanskrit. But no one who wishes to acquire a thorough knowledge of these or any other of the Indo-European languages, no one who takes an interest in the philosophy and the historical growth of human speech, no one who desires to study the history of that branch of mankind to which we belong, and to discover in the first germs of the language, religion, and mythology of our forefathers, the wisdom of him who is not the God of the Jews only, can, for the future, dispense with some knowledge of the language and ancient literature of India.
