Professional Missionary and Orientalist Curator ... - Ines G. Županov

214 Ines Županov
conclusions that India, not Egypt or Greece, was the most antique
civilization was not so different from, neither irreconcilable with,
other scholars and writers such as William Jones whose texts he knew
well. By 1798, Paulinus’s comparative method produced one of the
first studies on the kinship of Indo-European languages 34 . In his De
antiquitate et affinitate linguae Zendicae, Samscrdamicae et Germanicae
dissertatio, Paulinus juxtaposes linguistic forms in Sanskrit, Avestan
and German in order to prove the existence of kinship between these
languages 35 . In fact, Paulinus set out to prove with examples Jones’s
famous claim in 1786 of the common origin of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit,
but it was not until 1802 before he finally came up with decisive
pronouncement on the issue 36 . Thus, he wrote in his De latini sermonis
origine, both Sanskrit, Zend and Latin possess between them «an intimate
affinity» and resemble as «one egg to another» 37 .
Sanskrit, in Paulinus’s opinion, contained truth on the one hand,
and many lies on the other. As a repository of the Brahmanical high
learning, it also wove into it monstrous «fables» and corrupted the
pristine message (presumably Christian, of course). Paulinus was in
34
Jauk-Pinhak, Some Notes cit., p. 136.
35
Paulinus a S. Bartholomaeo, De antiquitate et affinitate linguae Zendicae, Samscrdamicae
et Germanicae dissertatio..., Patavii, Typis seminarii 1798 [1799].
36
The similarity between Latin and Sanskrit was noticed very early. Filippo Sassetti
who visited India between 1583 and 1588 described Sanskrit as a language with
a well ordered grammar and containing words that resembled Italian. He also hinted
at the fact that it was perhaps India the cradle of all languages. D.F. Lach, Asia in the
Making of Europe, 3 vols., Chicago-London, University of Chicago Press 1965-1977,
II (1970), 3, p. 520. French Jesuits such as J.F. Pons, J. Calmette and, in particular,
P.-G. Coeurdoux were some of the most learned Sanskritists of the first half of the
18 th century. Coeurdoux may have been the first to report in 1767 on the close family
resemblance between Greek, Latin and Sanskrit terms. This letter was sent to
the members of the Académie Royal des Inscription et des Belles-Lettres in Paris.
S. Murr, L’Inde philosophique entre Bossuet et Voltaire, l’indologie du Père Coeurdoux;
stratégies, apologétique et scientificité, 2 vols., Paris, Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient
1987, II, p. 29.
37
Jauk-Pinhak, Some notes cit. Paulinus a S. Bartholomaeo, De latini sermonis
origine et cum orientalibus linguis connectione dissertatio..., Romae, Fulgonius 1802. A
ten page manuscript copy of the article with slight differences can be found in Rome,
BNVE, Rari e manoscriti, Fondi minori, Santa Maria della Scala, 36 (C), p. 2. The
date on the manuscript is 1801. There is another copy ibid., 34, pp. 58-77.