Jones states the Indo-European hypothesis in Calcutta
In his Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatick Society of Bengal, William Jones argued that Sanskrit's affinity to Greek and Latin in verb roots and grammatical forms was too strong to be accidental, and that the three had sprung from a common source which perhaps no longer existed. The claim of a lost common ancestor, rather than descent of one attested language from another, is what makes this the conventional starting point of comparative linguistics. The discourse was published in the first volume of Asiatick Researches in 1788. The date of 2 February 1786 is as given in the standard accounts and was not re-checked in this session.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Sir William Jones · person · Britain; served in Bengal · not located
- Sanskrit · cultural practice · South Asia · not located
- Indo-European · concept · Europe, western and southern Asia; by later colonisation, worldwide · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
The Third Anniversary Discourse, on the Hindus
Supports the statement that Jones argued in 1786 for a common lost source of Sanskrit, Greek and Latin on the evidence of verb roots and grammatical forms. V55 verification basis: this session had no access to any source — WebFetch was egress-blocked for every host attempted and the WebSearch budget was exhausted before authoring — so the cited work was not retrieved, and no page, volume or figure quoted from it was re-checked. The discourse is paraphrased, never quoted verbatim, and the delivery date of 2 February 1786 is taken from the standard accounts rather than from the publication itself.
Asiatick Society of Bengal; published in Asiatick Researches, vol. 1 · 1786 (delivered); 1788 (published) · Partly verified
Jones, W., "The Third Anniversary Discourse, on the Hindus", Asiatick Researches, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1788)
Recorded on Sir William Jones
- Proto-Indo-European is spoken
- Jones states the Indo-European hypothesis in Calcutta
- Verner explains the exceptions to Grimm's Law
- Hrozný identifies Hittite as an Indo-European language
- Phylogeography puts the Indo-European homeland in Anatolia
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.