# William Jones (philologist)

Sir William Jones (September 28, 1746 – April 27, 1794) was an English philologist and student of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages. He was also the founder of the Asiatic Society.

## Quotes

* My opinion is, that power should always be distrusted, in whatever hands it is placed.
** Letter to Lord Althorpe, 5 October 1782, in Lord Teignmouth, Life of Sir W. Jones (1835), vol. 1
* I have carefully and regularly perused the Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that the volume contains more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been written.
** Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 31.
* Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, " Go forward!" " Come up higher!"
** Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 564.
* Than all Bocara's vaunted gold, Than all the gems of Samarcand.
** A Persian Song of Hafiz, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
* Go boldly forth, my simple lay, Whose accents flow with artless ease, Like orient pearls at random strung.
** A Persian Song of Hafiz, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "'T was he that ranged the words at random flung, Pierced the fair pearls and them together strung", Eastwick: Anvari Suhaili. (Translated from Firdousi).
* On parent knees, a naked new-born child, Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled; So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep, Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.
** From the Persian, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
* What constitutes a state? Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain. And sovereign law, that state's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate, Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
** Ode in Imitation of Alcæus, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Neither walls, theatres, porches, nor senseless equipage, make states, but men who are able to rely upon themselves", Aristides, Orations (Jebb's edition), vol. i. (trans. by A. W. Austin); By Themistocles alone, or with very few others, does this saying appear to be approved, which, though Alcæus formerly had produced, many afterwards claimed: "Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans, make a state; but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls."—Ibid. vol. ii.
* Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven, Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven.
** In Lord Teignmouth, Life of Sir W. Jones (1835), vol. 2
** Compare: "Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six, / Four spend in prayer, the rest on Nature fix", Translation of lines quoted by Edward Coke.
* And as Jones himself put it in a later essay On the Poetry of the Eastern Nations, "[I]t has been my endeavour for several years to inculcate this truth, that, if the principal writings of the Asiaticks, which are reposited in our public libraries, were printed with the usual advantage of notes and illustrations, and if the languages of Eastern nations were studied in our great seminaries of learning, where every other branch of useful knowledge is taught to perfection, a new and ample field would be opened for speculation; we should have a more extensive insight into the history of the human mind; we should be furnished with a new set of images and similitudes; and a number of excellent compositions would be brought to light, which future scholars might explain, and future poets might imitate."
* In the preface to his Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), Jones again feels the need to plead for wider cultural sympathies: "Some men never heard of the Asiatick writings, and others will not be convinced that there is anything valuable in them; some pretend to be busy, and others are really idle; some detest the Persians, because they believe in Mahomed, and others despise their language, because they do not understand it: we all love to excuse, or conceal, our ignorance, and are seldom willing to allow any excellence beyond the limits of our own attainments: like savages, who thought the sun rose and set for them alone, and could not imagine that the waves, which surrounded their island, left coral and pearls upon any other shore."8'
* As he wrote in "An Essay on Education," "[After] fixing the good of ourselves and our fellow-creatures as the primary end proposed by a liberal education; and considering the cultivation of our understanding, and the acquisition of knowledge, as the secondary objects of it: Now, as neither this knowledge can be perfectly obtained, nor the reason completely improved, in the short duration of human life, unless the accumulated experience and wisdom of all ages and all nations, be added to that which we gain by our own researches, it is necessary to understand the languages of those people who have been, in any period of the world, distinguished for their superior knowledge. It follows, therefore, that the more immediate object of education is, to learn the languages of celebrated nations both ancient and modern."85
* Jones was forever emphasizing the similarities between India and Greece, or pointing out Europe's debt to Indian philosophy, or hinting at a common source for the two great civilizations, writing, for instance, in the third anniversary discourse that it was impossible, "to read the Vedanta, or the many fine compositions in illustration of it, without believing that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the sages of India."
** quoted in Ibn, W. (2009). Defending the West: A critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books.
* It gave me inexpressible pleasure to fin d myself in the midst of so noble an amphitheatre almost encircled by the vast regions of Asia, which has ever been esteemed the nurse of sciences, the inventress of delightful and useful arts, the scene of glorious actions, fertile in the productions of human genius, abounding in natural wonders, and infinitely diversified in the forms of religion and government, in the laws, manners, customs and languages as well as in the features and complexions of men.
** Jones, in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 82-3
* Barrow loads them with the severe, but just, epithets of malignant , unsocial, obstinate, distrustful, sordid , changeable, turbulent; and describes them as furiously zealous in succouring their own countrymen, but implacably hostile to other nations; yet, with all the sottish perverseness, the stupid arrogance, and the brutal atrocity of their character, they had the peculiar merit, among all races of men under heaven, of preserving a rational and pure system of devotion in the midst of wild polytheism , inhuman or obscene rites, and a dark labyrinth of errours produced by ignorance and supported by interested fraud ."
** in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 93
* We may therefore hold this proposition firmly established , that Iran or Persia in its largest sense, was me true center of languages, and of arts; which, instead of travelling westward only, as it has been fancifully supposed, or eastward, as might with equal reason have been asserted , were expanded in all directions to all the regions of the world, in which the Hindu race had settled under various denominations.
** in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Jones, 91
* "I am sensible, how much these remarks will offend the warm advocates for Indian antiquity; but we must not sacrifice truth to a base fear of giving offence: that the vedas were actually written before the flood , I shall never believe ... In the Manava Sastra, to conclude this disgression, the measure is so uniform and melodious, and the style so perfectly Sanscrit, or polished., that me book must be more modern than the scriptures of Moses, in which the simplicity, or rather nakedness, of the Hebrew dialect, metre, and style, must convince every unbiased man of their superior antiquity."
** in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 248

### 1770s

* Whether it be that the immoderate heat disposes the Eastern people to a Life of indolence, which gives them full leisure to cultivate their talents, or whether the sun has a real influence on the imagination ... whatever be the cause, it has always been remarked, that the Asiaticks excel the inhabitants of our colder regions in the liveliness of their fancy, and the richness of their invention.
** Jones in 1772, in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press., 82

### 1780s

* The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
** Jones' third annual discourse before the Asiatic Society on the history and culture of the Hindus (delivered on 2 February 1786 and published in 1788)
* Plato drew many of his notions (through Egypt, where he resided for some time) from the sages of Hindustán.
** "Thirteen Inedited Letters from Sir William Jones to Mr. (Afterwards Sir) Charles Wilkins", Letters of Sir William Jones, 1784. Quoted in M. Sedgewick, Western Sufism.
* I am no Hindu, but I hold the doctrine of the Hindus concerning a future state to be incomparably more rational, more pious, and more likely to deter men from vice, than the horrid opinions, inculcated on punishments without end.
** letter to Earl Spencer, in 1787, as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture
* I am in love with the gopis, he wrote to Wilkins in 1784, 'charmed with Krishna, an enthusiastic admirer ofRama and a devout adorer of Brahma. Yudhisthir, Arjuna, Bhirna and other warriors of the Mahabharata appear greater in my eyes than Agamemnon, Ajax, and Achilles appeared when I first read the Iliad.
** Keay, John India Discovered Rupa and Co. 1981 p-28 as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture
* Of these cursory observations on the Hindus, which it could require volumes to expand and illustrate, this is the result: that they had an immemorial affinity with the old Persians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians, the Phenicians, Greeks, [46] and Tuscans, the Scythians or Goths, and Celts, the Chinese, Japanese, and Peruvians; whence, as no reason appears for believing, that they were a colony from any one of those nations, or any of those nations from them, we may fairly conclude that they all proceeded from some central country, to investigate which will be the object of my future Discourses; and I have a sanguine hope, that your collections during the present year will bring to light many useful discoveries; although the departure for Europe of a very ingenious member, who first opened the inestimable mine of Sanscrit literature, will often deprive us of accurate and solid information concerning the languages and antiquities of India.
** The Third Anniversary Discourse delivered 2 February 1786.
* Of the Indian Religion and Philosophy, I shall here say but little; because a full account of each would require a separate volume: it will be sufficient in this dissertation to assume, what might be proved beyond controversy, that we now live among the adorers of those very deities, who were worshipped under different names in Old Greece and Italy, and among the professors of those philosophical tenets, which the Ionic and Attic writers illustrated with all the beauties of their melodious language.
** SIR WILLIAM JONES THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE, ON THE HINDUS Delivered 2 February, 1786. Works I, pp. 19-34. and in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
* The Hindus are said to have boasted of three inventions, all of which, indeed, are admirable, the method of instructing by apologues, the decimal scale adopted now by all civilized nations, and the game of Chess, on which they have some curious treatises; but, if their numerous works on Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Music, all which are extant and accessible, were explained in some language generally known, it would be found, that they had yet higher pretensions to the praise of a fertile and inventive genius. Their lighter Poems are lively and elegant; their Epic, magnificent and sublime in the highest degree; their Purána's comprise a series of mythological Histories in blank verse from the Creation to the supposed incarnation of Buddha; and their Védas, as far as we can judge from that compendium of them, which is called Upanishat, abound with noble speculations in metaphysics, and fine discourses on the being and attributes of God.
** SIR WILLIAM JONES THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE, ON THE HINDUS Delivered 2 February, 1786. Works I, pp. 19-34. and in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
* The remains of architecture and sculpture in India, which I mention here as mere monuments of antiquity, not as specimens of ancient art, seem to prove an early connection between this country and Africa: the pyramids of Egypt, the colossal statues described by Pausanias and others, the sphinx, and the Hermes Canis, which last bears a great resemblance to the Varáhávatár, or the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of a Boar, indicate the style and mythology of the same indefatigable workmen
** SIR WILLIAM JONES THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE, ON THE HINDUS Delivered 2 February, 1786. Works I, pp. 19-34. and in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
* We are told by the Grecian writers, that the Indians were the wisest of nations; and in moral wisdom, they were certainly eminent...
** SIR WILLIAM JONES THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE, ON THE HINDUS Delivered 2 February, 1786. Works I, pp. 19-34. and in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

#### The Gods of Greece, Italy and India 1788

    The Gods of Greece, Italy and India by Sir William Jones. quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1.
* Some intelligent and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt the authenticity of the accounts delivered by Moses.
* Either the first eleven chapters of Genesis . . . are true, or the whole fabrick of our national religion is false, a conclusion which none of us, I trust, would wish to be drawn.
* I . . . am obliged of course to believe the sanctity of the venerable books [of Genesis].

### 1790s

* All these indubitable facts may induce no ill-grounded opinion, that Ethiopia and Hindustàn were peopled or colonized by the same extraordinary race.
** Jones, 1799, p. 34, 1807a, pp. 45–56; emphasis in original. quoted in Jean-Paul Demoule - The Indo-Europeans_ Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West-OUP USA (2023)
* I am persuaded, that a connexion subsisted between the old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, Greece, and Italy, long before they migrated to their several settlements, and consequently before the birth of m o s e s ; but the proof of this proposition will in no degree affect the truth and facticity of the Mosaick History, which, if confirmation were necessary, it would rather tend to confirm. The Divine Legate, educated by the daughter of a king, and in all respects highly accomplished, could not but know the mythological system of Egypt, but he must have condemned the superstitions of that people, and despised the speculative absurdities of their priests; though some of their traditions concerning the creation and the flood were grounded in truth. There is no shadow then of a foundation for an opinion, that Moses borrowed the first nine or ten chapters of Genesis from the literature of Egypt: still less can the adamantine pillars of our Christian faith be moved by the result of any debates on the comparative antiquity of the Hindus and Egyptians, or of any inquiries into the Indian Theology.
** William Jones, 1799. in Arvidsson, in Arvidsson, S. (2006). Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. S. Aryan idols, 35
* Either the first eleven chapters of Genesis, all due allowances being made for a figurative Eastern style, are true, or the whole fabrick of our national religion is false.
** William Jones, 1799. in Arvidsson, in Arvidsson, S. (2006). Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.S. Aryan idols, 35
* Jones himself was emphatic that the "primeval events" of the construction of the Tower of Babel and the subse- quent scattering of the original monolanguage into different tongues "are described as having happened between the Oxus and Euphrates, the mountains of the Caucus and the borders of India, that is within the limits of Iran." There was no doubt about this, since "the Hebrew narrative [is] more than human in its origin and consequently true in every substantial part of it." Therefore, "it is no longer probable only, but absolutely certain, that the whole race of man proceeded from Iran, whence they migrated at first in three great colonies [those of Shem, Japhet, and Ham]; and that those three branches grew from a common stock" (Jones ] 1792, 486-487).
** quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1.
* I propose to lay before you a concise history of Indian chronology extracted from Sanskrit books, attached to no system, and as much disposed to reject Mosaick history, if it be proved erroneous, as to believe it, if it be confirmed by sound reason from indubitable evidence.
** On the Chronology of the Hindus, 1790, quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1.

#### "On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

    Discourse the Eleventh. Delivered 20 February, 1794. By the President. The works of Sir William Jones (1807) Vol. 3, pp. 229-252.
* By science I mean an assemblage of transcendental propositions discoverable by human reason, and reducible to first principles, axioms, or maxims, from which they may all be derived in a regular succession; and there are consequently as many sciences as there are general objects of our intellectual powers: when man first exerts those powers, his objects are himself and the rest of nature; himself he perceives to be composed of body and mind... and in the leisure... his intellect is directed to nature at large, to the substance of natural bodies, to their several properties, and to their quantity... and... arrives at the demonstration of a first intelligent cause; whence his collected wisdom, being arranged in the form of science, chiefly consists of physiology and medicine, metaphysicks and logick, ethicks and jurisprudence, natural philosophy and mathematicks; from which the religion of nature (since revealed religion must be referred to history, as alone affording evidence of it) has in all ages and in all nations been the sublime and consoling result.
* [T]he mytaphysicks and logick of the Bráhmens, comprised in their six philosophical Sástras... have never yet been accessible to Europeans; and, by the help of the Sanscrit language, we now may read the works of the Saugatas, Bauddhas, A'rhatas, Jainas, and other heterodox philosophers, whence we may gather the metaphysical tenets prevalent in China and Japan, in the eastern peninsula of India, and in many considerable nations of Tartary: there are also some valuable tracts on these branches of science in Persian and Arabick, partly copied from the Greeks, and partly comprising the doctrines of the Súfís which anciently prevailed, and still prevail in great measure over this oriental world, and which the Greeks themselves condescended to borrow from eastern sages.
* The fundamental tenet of the Védántí school, to which in a more modern age the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted, not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but, in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending, that it has no essence independent of mental perception, that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms, that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy, which alone sustains them, were suspended but for a moment; an opinion which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained in the present century with great elegance, but with little publick applause; partly because it has been misunderstood, and partly because it has been misapplied by the false reasoning of some unpopular writers, who are said to have disbelieved in the moral attributes of God, whose omnipresence, wisdom, and goodness are the basis of the Indian philosophy... [N]othing can be farther removed from impiety than a system wholly built on the purest devotion; and the inexpressible difficulty, which any man, who shall make the attempt, will assuredly find in giving a satisfactory definition of material substance, must induce us to deliberate with coolness, before we censure the learned and pious restorer of the ancient Véda; though we cannot but admit, that, if the common opinions of mankind be the criterion of philosophical truth, we must adhere to the system of Gotama, which the Bráhmens of this province almost universally follow.
* I have already had occasion to touch on the Indian metaphysicks of natural bodies according to the most celebrated of the Asiatick schools, from which the Pythagoreans are supposed to have borrowed many of their opinions; and as we learn from Cicero, that the old sages of Europe had an idea of centripetal force and a principle of universal gravitation... so I can venture to affirm, without meaning to pluck a leaf from the neverfading laurels of our immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology and part of his philosophy may be found in the Védas and even in the works of the Sufis: that most subtil spirit, which he suspected to pervade natural bodies, and, lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion, the emission, reflection, and refraction of light, electricity, calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element endued with those very powers; and the Védas abound with allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly ascribe to the Sun, thence called Aditya, or the Attractor; a name designed by the mythologists to mean the child of the Goddess Aditi; but the most wonderful passage on the theory of attraction occurs in the charming allegorical poem of Shi'ri'n and Ferha'd, or the Divine Spirit and a human Soul disinterestedly pious; a work which from the first verse to the last, is a blaze of religious and poetical fire. The whole passage appears to me so curious that I make no apology for giving you a faithful translation of it: "There is a strong propensity, which dances through every atom, and attracts the minutest particle to some peculiar object; search this universe from its base to its summit, from fire to air, from water to earth, from all below the Moon to all above the celestial spheres, and thou wilt not find a corpuscle destitute of that natural attractibility; the very point of the first thread, in this apparently tangled skein, is no other than such a principle of attraction, and all principles beside are void of a real basis; from such a propensity arises every motion perceived in heavenly or in terrestrial bodies; it is a disposition to be attracted, which taught hard steel to rush from its place and rivet itself on the magnet; it is the same disposition, which impels the light straw to attach itself firmly on amber; it is this quality which gives every substance in nature a tendency toward another, and an inclination forcibly directed to a determinate point." These notions are vague, indeed, and unsatisfactory; but permit me to ask, whether the last paragraph of Newton's incomparable work goes much farther, and whether any subsequent experiments have thrown light on a subject so abstruse and obscure: that the sublime astronomy and exquisitely beautiful geometry, with which that work is illumined, should in any degree be approached by the Mathematicians of Asia... but we must suspend our opinion of Indian astronomical knowledge, till the Súrya siddhánta shall appear in our own language, and even then... our greedy and capacious ears will by no means be satisfied; for in order to complete an historical account of genuine Hindu astronomy, we require... translations of at least three other Sanscrit books; of the treatise by Parasara, for the first age of Indian science, of that by Vara'ha [Mihira] with the copious comment of his very learned son [Prithuyasas], for the middle age, and of those written by Bhascara for times comparatively modern...
* From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attributes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabick, Persian, and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions to the poems of Sadi', Niza'm'i and Firdaus'i, the four Védas, and many parts of the numerous Puránas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedánti and Sufi theologists, who blending uncertain metaphysicks with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the divine spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert... that all spirit is homogeneous, that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generick spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emane from it; an opinion which Gotama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial creator supremely wise, and a constant preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negation of it; though the last named professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase, which occurs, indeed, in the Véda, but in a sense diametrically opposite to that, which he would have given it. The passage to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says, "That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One."

## Quotes about Jones

* He is well known to be one of the first Scholars in the world; but his principal recommendation on the present occasion is the excellence of his public principles which are those of a zealous and decided Whig. I may safely say that in this respect he is far from having an equal among his competitors.
** Richard Price to David Hartley (30 May 1780), quoted in Garland Cannon, ‘Sir William Jones and Anglo-American Relations during the American Revolution’, Modern Philology, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Aug., 1978), p. 37, n. 28
* The world is idea. This truth is by no means new. It was implicitly involved in the sceptical reflections from which Descartes started. Berkeley, however, was the first who distinctly enunciated it, and by this he has rendered a permanent service to philosophy, even though the rest of his teaching should not endure. Kant's primary mistake was the neglect of this principle... How early again this truth was recognised by the wise men of India, appearing indeed as the fundamental tenet of the Vedânta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa, is pointed out by Sir William Jones in the last of his essays: "On the philosophy of the Asiatics"...
** Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818/19) as quoted in The World as Will and Idea (1883) Tr. R. B. Haldane, J. Kemp p. 4. Schopenhauer cites Jones in Asiatic Researches vol iv. p. 164.
* Lord Teignmouth recounts in his Memoirs of Sir William Jones how Jones was affectionately regarded by all those who came into contact with him: I could dwell with rapture on the affability of his conversation and manners, on his modest, unassuming deportment; nor can I refrain from remarking that he was totally free from pedantry, as well as from that arrogance and self-sufficiency which sometimes accompany and disgrace the greatest abilities; his presence was the delight of every society, which his conversation exhilarated and improved. His intercourse with the Indian natives of character and abilities was extensive: he liberally rewarded those by whom he was served and assisted and his dependents were treated by him as friends.... Nor can I resist the impulse which I feel to repeat an anecdote of what occurred after his demise; the [Hindu] pundits who were in the habit of attending him, when I saw them at a public durbar a few days after that melancholy event, could neither restrain their tears for his loss, nor find terms to express their admiration at the wonderful progress which he had made in the sciences which they professed.82
** quoted in Ibn, W. (2009). Defending the West: A critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books.

## See also

* Hinduism
* Linguistics
* Philology

## External links

* Sir William Jones texts @archive.org
* William Jones (1746 - 1794) @Librivox.org
* Sir William Jones "The Third Anniversary Discourse" delivered 2 February 1786 @ELIOHS Electronic Library of Historiography
* CAISSA or The Game at Chess; a Poem (1763) by Sir William Jones, @ChessDryad.com California Chess History
* The principles of government, in a dialogue between a scholar and a peasant (1783) by Sir William Jones @openlibrary.org