Page "Franz Bopp" Paragraph 20

Martineau also wrote: “ Bopp's Sanskrit studies and Sanskrit publications are the solid foundations upon which his system of comparative grammar was erected, and without which that could not have been perfect.

For that purpose, far more than a mere dictionary knowledge of Sanskrit was required.

The resemblances which he detected between Sanskrit and the Western cognate tongues existed in the syntax, the combination of words in the sentence and the various devices which only actual reading of the literature could disclose, far more than in the mere vocabulary.

As a comparative grammarian he was much more than as a Sanskrit scholar ,” and yet “ it is surely much that he made the grammar, formerly a maze of Indian subtilty, as simple and attractive as that of Greek or Latin, introduced the study of the easier works of Sanskrit literature and trained ( personally or by his books ) pupils who could advance far higher, invade even the most intricate parts of the literature and make the Vedas intelligible.

The great truth which his Comparative Grammar established was that of the mutual relations of the connected languages.

Affinities had before him been observed between Latin and German, between German and Slavonic, etc., yet all attempts to prove one the parent of the other had been found preposterous .”