A major new critical biography of Sir William Jones (1746-94), the foremost Orientalist of his generation and one of the greatest intellectual navigators of all time, whose Sanskrit researches did more than any other writer to destroy Eurocentric prejudice, reshaping Western perceptions of India and the Orient.

A survey of the voluminous writings of Sir William Jones ( 1746-1794), pioneer English Orientalist who was vitally concerned with improving conditions in the East and explaining Eastern culture to the Europeans. Jones's writings are given in chronological and topical sequence, with comments on style, sources, organization, contents, author's purpose, critics' reaction, and influence on other writers. The appendix includes bibliographies of primary and secondary sources and an index of selected editions and/or printings in English and library locations of extant copies.

Sir William Jones was one of the greatest polymaths in history. At the time of his early death, in 1794, he knew 13 languages thoroughly and another 28 moderately well. But languages were for him only a means of reaching a deeper understanding, in contrasting cultures, of law, history, literature, music, botany, and other disciplines. Elected at the age of 26 to Johnson's Literary Club and knighted at 37, Jones was a close friend to many leading English luminaries of his time. He was called "Oriental Jones" by some, and his study of middle-eastern cultures, his championship of American independence, and finally his appointment as high court judge in Calcutta, made him a truly universal figure. On the bicentenary of his death, several scholars met at University College, Oxford--his old college--to commemorate his outstanding career and achievements. They found representative themes in Jones's life and work, aiming to strike a balance therein, and to remember, especially, the view taken of Jones by his informed contemporaries. This collection of fascinating papers is a result of that meeting.

"Aryan," a word that today evokes images of racial hatred and atrocity, was first used by Europeans to suggest bonds of kinship, as Thomas Trautmann shows in his far-reaching history of British Orientalism and the ethnology of India. When the historical relationship uniting Sanskrit with the languages of Europe was discovered, it seemed clear that Indians and Britons belonged to the same family. Thus the Indo-European or Aryan idea, based on the principle of linguistic kinship, dominated British ethnological inquiry. In the nineteenth century, however, an emergent biological "race science" attacked the authority of the Orientalists. The spectacle of a dark-skinned people who were evidently civilized challenged Victorian ideas, and race science responded to the enigma of India by redefining the Aryan concept in narrowly "white" racial terms. By the end of the nineteenth century, race science and Orientalism reached a deep and lasting consensus in regard to India, which Trautmann calls "the racial theory of Indian civilization," and which he undermines with his powerful analysis of colonial ethnology in India. His work of reassessing British Orientalism and the Aryan idea will be of great interest to historians, anthropologists, and cultural critics.

In this book Professor Arberry describes the lives and labours of six great scholars - Simon Ockley, Sir William Jones, E. W. Lane, E. H. Palmer, E.G. Browne and R. A Nicholson - men who were devoted to building a bridge between the peoples of Europe and Asia. To these biographical essays, Arberry has appended a fragment of candid autobiography and an eloquent plea for the further encouragement of Oriental studies.

Sir William Jones, 1746-1794, English philologist.