Forgotten Connections: Implicit and Explicit Uses of Classical Scholarship in the Comparisons of Sir William Jones’s On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India (1784)

Authors

  • Sebastiaan Godefridus Clercx Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Klassische Philologie, Berlin
Keywords: Classical reception, history of classical scholarship, comparative mythology, François Pomey, Sir William Jones

Abstract

The present paper discusses the philologist, lawyer, and (proto-)Indologist Sir William Jones (1746-1794), and in particular his introductory essay in India On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India, composed in 1784. It not only concentrates on how he compared Greco-Roman with Hindu mythology, but while answering it also takes into account the scholarly tradition of reinterpreting mythology in a Biblical context. Although the tradition was centuries old, Jones’s inclusion of Hindu mythology provided a boost for European comparative studies. In order to understand his methods and heuristics, this paper explores three case studies from the essay (Saturn-Manu-Noah, Minos-Manu, and Dionysus-Rāma-Raamah), and how Jones composed them, using the mythological thesaurus the Pantheum by the Jesuit François Pomey.

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Published
31-01-2019
How to Cite
Godefridus Clercx, S. (2019). Forgotten Connections: Implicit and Explicit Uses of Classical Scholarship in the Comparisons of Sir William Jones’s On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India (1784). Myrtia, 33, 295–319. Retrieved from https://revistas.um.es/myrtia/article/view/361111
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