As mentioned, it is handed down that Franz Bopp guided August Wilhelm von Schlegel to the study of Sanskrit in Paris. We recall what we have read in the autobiography of Max Müller, p. 122: “Here my Collegien Buch breaks off, the fact being that I was preparing to go to Berlin to hear the lectures of Bopp and Schelling.” This “Bopp” is Franz Bopp who went to Paris to learn “Sanskrit” in 1812.
Why to Paris? For how long does Franz Bopp stay in Paris? From whom does he learn Sanskrit and when does he guide August Wilhelm von Schlegel to the study of the Sanskrit language? It must have been before August Wilhelm von Schlegel starts acting as the secretary of the crown prince of Sweden in 1813. So, August Wilhelm von Schlegel could have learnt the Sanskrit language in Paris together with Franz Bopp at best for months only, between 1812 and 1813. Thereafter he had no opportunity to learn Sanskrit. Now we shall have to see how and how much Sanskrit Franz Bopp could have learnt before 1813 ended and then evaluate the quality of his guidance for August Wilhelm von Schlegel. In addition, we have to ascertain to whom Franz Bopp could have guided August Wilhelm von Schlegel to learn the Sanskrit language. Who was the teacher in Paris? Therefore, we are compelled to focus now on Franz Bopp.
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For a few years (1808–1814) Aschaffenburg was seat of a university, though not with all faculties, but with history, philology and philosophy. At the age of eighteen, Franz Bopp took up the two years’ “philology course” in 1808 at the Karls–University in Aschaffenburg. This was mainly a study of languages: the Greek, Latin, English, French and Italian. He was said to have been good in his studies, but not good enough. Though at the end of this two years’ “philology course” in 1810 he stood once first and once second in the class, he was unable to earn a “doctor’s degree”. He stood twice as “Defendant” (defender of his dissertation), but the doctor’s degree in philosophy was denied to him finally, unlike the later bishop of Speyer and Augsburg, Richarz, as it is documented. Does it sound like the beginning of an outstanding “scholar”?
His academic teacher Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, a professor of philosophy and history, encouraged his son and Franz Bopp to study “linguistics” at some other University, whatever “linguistics” might then have been. In our simplicity of mind, we first assumed that “linguistics” is a science-based post-philology discipline. Then we looked into the eventual meaning of the word to comprehend that “linguistics” has to do with languages only. Then why cover it with a Latin word? Is it also a deceptive package like “philology”?
Then we started consulting books of reference. The result is enlightening for us. It is a relatively new deceptive package. We won’t go deep into it just now. Only this much here. It is rooted, so it is maintained, in the Sanskrit language and its grammar. Modern scholars of languages have discovered relatively recently that sound and meaning of words are interrelated. The demigods of this discovery are William Jones, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Franz Bopp, Noam Chomsky, etc.. We shall have to deal with the first three demigods later in due course because of their claims of knowing the Sanskrit language.
Now we get back to Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann and to his advising Franz Bopp to study “linguistics” after he failed finally to earn the doctor’s degree at the University of Aschaffenburg. Probably Professor Windischmann was fulfilling his dreams projected in the next generation. Why his dreams? Almost 80 years later Salomon Lefmann (1831–1912), professor of Indology at Heidelberg University, is to hit the nail on the head describing the spirit of that time, which had led to dreams, writing these lines in his book “Franz Bopp, his life and his science, Berlin 1891–1897", (p. 11–12):
“While princes and peoples anxiously following the current events were directing their eyes to France, where a powerful war lord, having taken possession of the inheritance of the revolution, had thence seized power over Germany and Europe, the philosophers and scholars were looking at a Far East and at a far away past. All wisdom and all sciences, all art and culture, had emerged there, there in the Orient, where the cradle of mankind had been. One had to take up oriental issues, study oriental antiquity, oriental philosophy, oriental languages – Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and – was anything impossible – the culture of Egypt, the language and literature of ancient India.
Beside the wonderland Egypt, brought nearer through Napoleon’s campaign, its mysterious priestly wisdom and picture scripts, indeed even more than this and more than any other country of the world India captured the fantasy. What one knew was little, the more what one did believe, both was, however, enough to push the devote enthusiasm of that time and of people to a climax. With the light of dawn, which had then just risen there, a cheerful morning was already shining to them promising the fulfilment of the most beautiful dreams and sentiments.
Since hardly two decades the English people had established their rule in India, had started their pioneering works there. The first reports of the Calcuttan society were received with true enthusiasm; everything that came from there was accepted with faithful reverence, and new revelations about the ‘oldest’ language and wisdom of mankind with boundless longing. A language ‘more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either’, as Sir William Jones said, and yet in near kinship with both...”
As promised, we shall deal with Sir William Jones later. We have read, yes, we had to read repeatedly these lines written by Salomon Lefmann in 1881. Not because of his remarkable style of expressions like: ‘with faithful reverence’ or ‘with boundless longing’. No. We are also not criticising that Salomon Lefmann, as a religious Jew, for his failure to realise that Hebrew and anything Jewish had been excluded from the blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian culture more than half a century earlier. We criticise solely this culture that produced and produce not only “anti-Semitism” but “Salomon Lefmanns” as well.
Even in Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann’s and in Franz Bopp’s lifetime one could have known how cruelly the successors of Columbus had committed genocide and how beastly the massacres in the land of “new revelations about the ‘oldest’ language and wisdom of mankind” performed by the “Vasco da Gamas”, by Portuguese, by Britons, by Dutch and by French heirs. There was no dearth of reports given by eyewitnesses.
How much perversion did it require to write a sentence like: ‘Since hardly two decades the English people had established their rule in India, started their pioneering works there’? And how should one evaluate the fact that this sentence or sentences like this has not been criticised and corrected by even one single renowned poet, writer, theologian, philosopher, scientist belonging to “the wonder that was” this culture prevailing up to our days?
It is absolutely not the case that Salomon Lefmann wasn’t able to formulate critical sentences. What did he write referring to Napoleon? ‘While princes and peoples anxiously following the current events were directing their eyes to France, where a powerful war lord, having taken possession of the inheritance of the revolution, had thence seized power over Germany and Europe, the philosophers and scholars were looking at a Far East and at a far away past.’
We do not wish to raise such questions