George and others,
I know this discussion was not intended to be a bashing of Monier-Williams (whatever sins he may have committed, we all owe a vast debt to his work; I've worn out two dictionaries, and a third was saved only by the fact that it now exists in a non-physical online form), so it is worth pointing out that--
1. Monier Williams does acknowledge his debt to Otto Böhtlingk and
Rudolf Roth; but his acknowledgement apparently appears in the 1872 edition, which I have never seen. The 1899 edition (the one we all use) has at the beginning of the preface:
"The first edition appeared in the summer of 1872. The extent of its
indebtedness to the great seven-volumed Sanskṛit-German Thesaurus
compiled by the two eminent German Sanskṛitists, Otto Böhtlingk and
Rudolf Roth, with the assistance of many distinguished scholars, such as
Professor A.Weber of Berlin — then only completed as far as the
beginning of the letter व v — was fully acknowledged by me in the Preface."
2. Monier-Williams's claim to originality was based, as he states, on the plan of the work, not the words in it. Words mean what they mean, so "plagiarism" here is not quite an applicable term. As he states:
"The words and the meanings of the words of a Dictionary can scarcely be
proved by its compilers to belong exclusively to themselves."
3. Much the same can be said of the composition of any Sanskrit grammar text. Grammar rules have not changed in the past 2500 years; at best, the compiler of a Sanskrit grammar merely restates (or re-orders) rules stated by others. Thus, Macdonell tells us in the preface to his grammar that he restates Muller's work, albeit in a shorter version.
By the way, Monier-Williams was born in India; there is a a terrific photo of him by his colleague Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgeson) on his Wikipedia page. (Dodgeson also photographed Monier-Williams's daughter Ella with some frequency.)
As far as the other discussion...I prefer saving my electronic ink for the many actually meaningful discussions this community of scholars has engendered over the years.
Herman
Herman Tull
Princeton, NJ