[INDOLOGY] First use of 'Indology'

[Malcolm Keating]

Another Google resource is the Ngram viewer, which shows an instance of "Indology" in the English corpus as early as 1852 and 1854. Performing a Google Books search on this time period yields an instance in 1854, in "Types of Mankind: Or Ethnological Resources", selections from the papers of Samuel George Morton, M.D. published by Lippincott, Grambo & Co in Philadelphia. The pertinent passage is this:

"Indology" will protest against profaning the sanctified soil of Indra and Brahma with the mere "tail-race" of a Semitic pond, originally filled by the Nile! Shades of Wilford, Faber, Hales, and the spirit of Edgar Quinet! In Germany, appeal will at once be made to Van Bohlen! In Wales, to Arthur James Johnes, Esq! Does not everybody know, it will be said, that the primordial civilization (unceremoniously kicked out of Ethiopian Meroë by Lepsius,) first dawned upon the Ganges? that Memphis, (if not also Palenque and Copan,) received her holiest Penates at the hands of Siva, Vishnu, Bhairava, Crishna, or any other Indian deity a pundit might invent?

Ngram results: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Indology&year_start=1800&year_end=1900&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=
Google book link: http://books.google.com/books?id=X2hAAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA633&dq=%22Indology%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZqQjUf-2L6aFywGz2IGIBQ&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22Indology%22&f=false

Best,
Malcolm

Malcolm Keating
PhD Candidate, Philosophy
University of Texas - Austin

http://sites.google.com/site/cmalcolmkeating

On Feb 15, 2013, at 8:12 AM, Lubin, Tim wrote:

> The Oxford English Dictionary takes it back only to 1888, but that seems too late, especially given that the quotation offered seems to treat the word already as a given.
> 
>   The study of Indian history, literature, philosophy, etc.
> 1888   Trübner's Monthly List Oct. 134   There is not a single branch of Indology—with, perhaps, the single exception of Vedic studies—which will not gain very considerably by its publication.
> 1895   Atlantic Monthly Mar. 399.  
>  
> Derivatives:
>   Indoˈlogian n. a student of Indology.
> 1897   A. Drucker tr. von Ihering Evol. Aryans 20   The endeavour of Indologians to attribute the highest possible degree of civilization to the mother-nation.
> 
> A quick search of Google books brings up some titles, but when I searched the text of those older titles directly, I got no hits, so the word "indology" must have been used in Google's bibliographic data.
> 
> Tim
> 
> 
> Timothy Lubin
> Professor of Religion and Lecturer in Religion and Law
> Washington and Lee University
> Lexington, Virginia 24450
> 
> http://home.wlu.edu/~lubint
> http://ifpindia.org/Brahmanical-Culture-in-Ancient-India.html 
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=930949
> 
> 
> 
> From: Suresh Kolichala <suresh.kolichala at gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 08:55:58 -0500
> To: "indology at list.indology.info" <indology at list.indology.info>
> Subject: [INDOLOGY] First use of 'Indology'
> 
> Don't know if this had been discussed earlier, but could someone point me to the literature discussing the first use of the term 'indology'?
> 
> Thanks,
> Suresh.
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> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
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