Sir William Jones - K S Ramaswami Sastri

Introduction

In one of his poems Sir William Jones said:

Give me (thus my high pride I raise)
The ploughman’s or the gardener’s praise,
With patient and unceasing toil
To meliorate a stubborn soil
And say (no higher need I ask),
With zeal hast thou performed thy task."

We cannot introduce such a worker of such strenuous self-dedicatedness better than with such words of his own, because his zeal for work was remarkable, his search for virgin soil was rewarded, his tillage of it was scientific and thorough, his love for it was deep and true, and his harvest was golden and abundant and valuable to all men and for all time. It is through men of his type and temperament that the true spirit of fraternity between the West and the East will be born. It is through the co-operative work of scholars and scientists and artists and philosophers and humanita-rians that the bridge of friendship can be thrown across the gulf of separation in spirit. Statesmen may proclaim the need of such kinship of feeling. Diplomats may proclaim that it exists already. But statesmen and diplomats and soldiers and civil officials can only keep up a patched-up outer peace often rent asunder by the frequent convulsions of inner estrangement, Sir William Jones was one of those with whom Indian scholars could and did feel that,

We were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn We drove a-field.

His Life

Sir William Jones was born in 1746. He studied at Harrow School. In his ninth year, he fractured his thigh-bone and was confined to his bed for a year. It was during this time that he studied the best English poets. He had an extraordinary memory. On one occasion when he and his friends proposed to act the Tempest but had no copy at hand, he wrote it for them correctly from his memory. He composed a tragedy on the story of Meleager which was acted by his school-fellows. Learning was always uppermost in his mind. Dr. Bennett says that "great abilities, great peculiarity of thinking, fondness for writing verses and plays of various kinds, and a degree of integrity and manly courage, distinguished him even at this period." Dr. Thackeray, the master of the school, said that "he was a boy of so active a mind, that if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury plain, he would nevertheless find the road to fame and riches."

(To be continued in October, 2006 issue)

© "Eminent Orientalists –– Indian, European, American" published by Asian Educational Services, Second Floor, 2/15 Ansari Road, New Delhi 110 002. Website: www.asianeds.com. Reprinted with permission.

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