Chapter 2 FROM THE PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES TO THE TIME OF SIR WILLIAM JONES.

Word Count: 2636 | Released on: 01/12/2017

s of Persian Studies-Roger-India's Language and Literatur

like the one in hand, which confines itself to poetry only, this chapter might perhaps be omitted. Nevertheless a brief consideration of this influe

cessively on the scene to get their share of the rich India commerce. German merchants also made a transitory effort. The firm of the Welsers in Augsburg sent two representatives wh

Barbosa, Fitch and van Linschoten for India, and the brothers Shirley for Persia. In the seventeenth century we may cite the names of della Valle, Baldaeus, Tavernier, Bernier and the German Mandelslo for India, while those of Olearius and Chardin are most famous in connection with Persia. And that books of travel were much read in Germany is attested by the number o

rsian words to corresponding words in German and Latin, and hints at the kinship of these idioms, though, looking only at the vocabulary and not at the structure, he supposes Persian to be related to Arabic.52 He tells us of

an incomplete French version, and shortly afterwards this version was translated into German by Johann Friedrich Ochsenbach of Tübingen, but apparently without attracting much notice.54 In 1644, Levin Warner of Leyden had given the P

ch missionary Sanson. Iversen, in speaking of the Parsi religion, gives an essentially correct account of the Zoroastrian hierarchy, of the supreme god and his seven servants, each presiding over some special element, evidently an allusion to Ahura Mazda and his six Amesha Spentas, with the possible addition of Sraosha.56 Sanson states that the Gavres have kept

me there were but two Germans who were known to have gained a knowledge of the sacred language, the missionary Heinrich Roth and the Jesuit Hanxleben.58 Even their work was not published and was superseded by that of Jones, Colebrooke and others. Most valuable information on Hindu religion was given by the Dutch preacher Abraham Roger in his well known book De Open-Deure tot het Verborgen Heydendom, published at Leyden in 1651, two years a

dditional light on the religious customs of India, but its sacred language remained a secret. In 1785, Herder wrote that what Europe knew of Hindu literature was only late legends, that the Sanskrit language as well as

Paul Fleming, although he was with Olearius in Persia, has written nothing that would interest us here. Andreas Gryphius took the subject for his drama "Catharina von Georgien" (1657) from Persian history. It is the story of the cruel execution of the Georgian queen by order of Shāh ?Abbās in 1624.61 Nor is Oriental influence in the eighteenth century more noticeable. Occasionally an Oriental touch is brought in. Pfe

the black art, as for instance Bodinus, whose De Magorum D?monomania was translated by Fischart (Strassburg, 1591), repeat about Zoroaster all the fables found in classical or patristic writers. So the Iranian sage figures prominently also

k of 1587 the sorcerer makes a journey in the air through England, Spain, France,

ius, manages to introduce an Armenian princess and a prince from Pontus. The latter, as we learn from the autobiography with which he favors us in the fifth book, has been in India. He took with him a Brahman sage, who burned himself on reaching Greece. Evidently Lohenstein had read Arrian's description of the burning of Kalanos (Arrian vii. 2, 3). The Asiatische Banise of Heinrich Anselm von Ziegler-Kliphausen, pe

has drawn, not only from the Bible, but from Hebrew, Arabic and Persian writings as well.70 That he should have made use of Arabic material is credible enough, for Dutch Orientalists like Golius and Erpenius had made this accessible.71 That he had some idea of Persian poetry is shown by his allusions to the fondness of Orientals for handsome boys.72 On the other hand, what he says of Zoroaster in the Musai can all be found in Latin and Greek writers.73 Here we get the

ease them they are fed on fresh human brain.75 Of course, we recognize at once the story of the tyrant ?a??āk familiar from Firdausī. The material for the Soirées was drawn largely from Armeno's Peregrinaggio, which purports to be a translation from the Persian, although no original is known to scholars.76 From these Soirées Voltaire took the material for his Zadig.77 In most cases, however, all that was Oriental about such stories was the name and the costume. So popular was the Oriental costume that Montesquieu used it for satirizing the Parisians in his Lettres Persanes (1721). Through French influence the Or

TNO

dem portugiesischen Indien in Hist. pol. Bl?tter f. d.

Annalen d. ?lteren deut

op. cit. ii.

lligirte und viel vermehrte Reise-Besc

ap. xxviii.

thal. Full title of Ochsenbach's book in Bu

the preface the author says that he undertakes his work, "cum e genuin

eq. Cf. Jackson, Die iranische Religion i

n op. cit.

eit der Indier, Heidel

reface t