Dear Colleagues,
Please allow me to announce a new publication:
Rosane Rocher, with Agnes Stache-Weiske, For the Sake of the
Vedas. The Anglo-German Life of Friedrich Rosen 1805–1837,
Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 118, XX–396
pages, ISBN 978-3-447-11448-6, available in printed paperback form
and as e-book.
https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/For_the_Sake_of_the_Vedas/title_6630.ahtml
“If it
were not for the Vedas, the university alone would not keep me in
London… I like to compare myself to an Indian muni, who forsakes
other concerns for a while to read the Vedas in peace and attain
Indra’s heaven, which in my case might be some German university.”
Friedrich Rosen thus wrote his teacher Bopp in 1830. Drawing
primarily from a vast correspondence, most of it unpublished, this
biography documents and analyzes his resolve and its impact on the
rise of European Indology. The works of this first PhD in Sanskrit
at a German university and first professor of Sanskrit at a
British university include the first edition and translation of
the first book of the Rigveda, with notes incomplete at his
untimely death, and the first edition and translation of the
oldest Arabic treatise on algebra. Yet more momentous was the help
Rosen gave to continental scholars from Humboldt, Schlegel, and
Burnouf to beginners, with sources uniquely accessible in England.
He also exercised his influence on the Oriental Translation Fund
to publish their works as models of critical and comparative
scholarship. His mentor Humboldt acknowledged “I can only deeply
regret that we … must be deprived of your presence. Yet, it is
definitely of greater benefit for you, and even more for
scholarship, that you remain so many years close to the sources of
the works to which you are devoting yourself.”
With all best wishes,
Rosane Rocher