文档介绍：Sir William Jones is best known for his famous Third Discourse of 1786 in which
he proposed that Sanskrit's affinity to Greek and Latin could be explained by
positing mon, earlier source, one known today as Indo-European. This bril-
liant thesis of language families laid the groundwork for parative lin-
guistics. Jones's interests and achievements, however, ranged far beyond language.
He studied and made contributions to anthropology and archaeology, to astronomy,
botany, history, law, literature, music, physiology, politics, and religion. He served
as a Supreme Court justice in India and founded the Asiatic Society, which stim-
ulated worldwide interest in India and the Orient. He was friends with many of
the leading intellectuals of his day and corresponded with Benjamin Franklin in
America and with Burke, Gibbon, Johnson, Percy, and Reynolds in Britain. In
his short life he mastered so many languages that even in his own time he was
regarded as a phenomenon, and so he was. Garland Cannon, editor of The Letters
of Sir William Jones, has written a new and definitive biography of this fascinating
man, who in his life and works teaches us that the path to understanding and
appreciating the art and literature of a great culture very different from our own
is through devoted study, a tolerant spirit, and an unquenchably curious mind.
The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones
Jones at the age of forty-seven, by A. W. Devis. Reproduced by permission of the British
Library (India Office Library and Records).
The Life and Mind of
Oriental Jones
Sir William Jones, the Father of
Modern Linguistics
GARLAND CANNON
Department of English, Texas A&M University
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