LANGUAGES, NATIONS AND PEOPLE:
HERMANN GUNDERTAND THE TRENDS
OF HIS TIME *
By
Heinrich von Stietencron, Tuebingen
Hermann Gundert was born in 1814, six years after Friedrich
Schlegel had published, in 1808, his famous work on "The Language
and Wisdom of the Indians". This was a book which received an
unsually wide response. It directed the attention of a broader
intellectual community throughout Europe towards the language,
philosophy and history of ancient India which, so far, had been
studied by a small circle of specialists only. The immediate effect was
that the vague fascination felt by the literate community for the
unknown spirituality of the East was now clearly focussed on India.
Indeed, an almost feverish enthusiasm for India was suddenly
unleashed: the Europeans were convinced that they had rediscovered
in the Aryans of ancient India their own forefathers or close relatives,
and with them their own Indo-European pre-history, the original
form of their own language, and the early vestiges of their own lost
wisdom.
This seemed to be proved by two particularly important
discoveries which had been made towards the end of the 18th
century and which were to be meticulouly studied in the 19th
century. One was the disclosure of the existence of an Indo-
Germanic family of languages —today generally called the Indo-
* Inaugural lecture by Prof. Dr Heinrich von Stietencron, director,
Seminar for Indology and Comparative History of Religions, University of
Tuebingen, on the occasion of the opening session of the "Dr Hermann
Gundert Conference" held in Stuttgart on May 19-23, 1993. The conference
formed part of three major events organized to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of Hermann Gundert's samadhi on April 25, 1893-the other
two events being a comprehensive exhibition on Gundert's life and work
(April 19 to June 11, 1993), and a "First International Conference Seminar
on Dravidic Studies" (May 17-18, 1993).
