3 - “Asiatic Jones, Oriental Jones”: Sir William Jones’ role in the raise of comparative linguistics

Summary

Others affirm that in the tower [of Babel] there were only nine materials, and that these were clay and water, wool and blood, wood and lime, pitch, linen, and bitumen … These represent noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, participle, conjunction, preposition, interjection.

(Auracepit na n-Éces, Irish grammarians; cited in Eco 1995:16)

Introduction

We come now to Sir William Jones (1746–94), to whom so much credit for developments in historical linguistics has been given. Jones’ (1786[1789]) famous “philologer” passage – that most momentous soundbite of yore – declared a relationship between Sanskrit and several other Indo-European languages, and is often cited as the beginning of Indo-European and of comparative-historical linguistics. Nearly all introductory textbooks on historical linguistics repeat this claim, as do linguistic publications generally. On all sides we see statements such as Bengtson and Ruhlen's (1997:3) that Sir William Jones “discovered the method of comparative linguistics – and with it the Indo-European family,” and Michalove et al.'s (1998:452) that “it was Sir William Jones’ famous statement in 1786 that not only led to the recognition of Indo-European … but also put linguistic taxonomy on a solid foundation for the first time.” Emeneau (2000:545) called Jones’ announcement in the philologer passage “that prime event in the linguistics of India and the Indo-European linguistic world.” Gray (1999:116–17) speaking of Jones’ “earth-shattering discovery,” asserts that “Jones used careful etymological analysis to demonstrate that [here the philologer passage is repeated] … The significance of this statement cannot be overestimated.