Franz Bopp

Philologist, born in Mainz, WC Germany. After four years' study in Paris, he produced a major study of Indo-European grammar (1816). In 1821 he was appointed to the chair of Sanskrit and comparative grammar in Berlin. His greatest work (written originally in German) is A Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavonic, Gothic and German (6 vols, 1833–52).

Franz Bopp (September 14, 1791 - October 23, 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages. Moreover, Friedrich Schlegel's book, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Speech and Wisdom of the Indians, Heidelberg, 1808), which had just begun to exert a powerful influence on the minds of German philosophers and historians, could not fail to stimulate also Bopp's interest in the sacred language of the Hindus.

In 1812, he went to Paris at the expense of the Bavarian government, with a view to devoting himself vigorously to the study of Sanskrit. There he enjoyed the society of such eminent men as AL Chézy, S de Sacy, LM Langlès, and, above all, of Alexander Hamilton (?) (1762 - 1824), who had acquired, when in India, an acquaintance with Sanskrit, and had brought out, conjointly with Langlès, a descriptive catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Imperial library. At that library, Bopp had access not only to the rich collection of Sanskrit manuscripts (most of which Father Pons had brought from India early in the 18th century) but also to the Sanskrit books which had up to that time been issued from the Calcutta and Serampore presses.

The first fruit of his four years' study in Paris appeared at Frankfurt am Main in 1816, under the title Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprachen (On the Conjugation System of Sanskrit in comparison with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic) (Windischmann contributed a preface). He did not need to prove the common parentage of Sanskrit with Persian, Greek, Latin and German, for previous scholars had long established that; He brought out, in the Annals of Oriental Literature (London, 1820), an essay entitled, "Analytical Comparison of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Teutonic Languages", in which he extended to all parts of the grammar what he had done in his first book for the verb alone. and a new edition of Nala (Berlin, 1832) -- followed in due course, all of which, with AW Schlegel's edition of the Bhagavad Gita (1823), proved excellent aids in initiating the early student into the reading of Sanskrit texts. On the publication, in Calcutta, of the whole Mahabharata, Bopp discontinued editing Sanskrit texts and confined himself thenceforth exclusively to grammatical investigations.

After a short residence at Göttingen, Bopp gained, on the recommendation of Humboldt, appointment to the chair of Sanskrit and comparative grammar at Berlin in 1821, and election as a member of the Royal Prussian Academy in the following year. His chief activity, however, centred on the elaboration of his Comparative Grammar, which appeared in six parts at considerable intervals (Berlin, 1833, 1835, 1842, 1847, 1849, 1852), under the title Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Gotischen und Deutschen (Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic and German.

How carefully Bopp matured this work emerges from the series of monographs printed in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy (1824 - 1831), which preceded it. They bear the general title, Vergleichende Zergliederung des Sanskrits und der mit ihm verwandten Sprachen (Comparative Analysis of Sanskrit and its related Languages).

In his Comparative Grammar Bopp set himself a threefold task:

to give a description of the original grammatical structure of the languages as deduced from their intercomparison to trace their phonetic laws, and to investigate the origin of their grammatical forms. Witness his monographs on the vowel system in the Teutonic languages (1836), on the Celtic languages (1839), on the Old Prussian (1853) and Albanian languages (1854), on the accent in Sanskrit and Greek (1854), on the relationship of the Malayo-Polynesian with the Indo-European languages (1840), and on the Caucasian languages (1846).

Critics have charged Bopp with neglecting the study of the native Sanskrit grammars, but in those early days of Sanskrit studies the great libraries of Europe did not hold the requisite materials; The further charge that Bopp, in his Comparative Grammar, gave undue prominence to Sanskrit stands disproved by his own words; for, as early as the year 1820, he gave it as his opinion that frequently the cognate languages serve to elucidate grammatical forms lost in Sanskrit (Annals of Or.

Bopp's researches, carried with wonderful penetration into the most minute and almost microscopical details of linguistic phenomena, led to the opening up of a wide and distant view into the original seats, the closer or more distant affinity, and the tenets, practices and domestic usages of the ancient Indo-European-speaking nations, and one can date the science of comparative grammar from his earliest publication. In grateful recognition of that fact, there originated in Berlin on the fiftieth anniversary (May 16, 1866) of the date of Windischmann's preface to that work, a fund called Die Bopp-Stiftung, for the promotion of the study of Sanskrit and comparative grammar, to which his numerous pupils and admirers in all parts of the globe gave liberal contributions.

See M Bréal's translation of Bopp's Vergleichende Grammatik (1866) introduction;