Sanskrit is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.
Heinrich Roth was a missionary and pioneering Sanskrit scholar.
Tolkāppiyam, also romanised as Tholkaappiyam, is the most ancient extant Tamil grammar text and the oldest extant long work of Tamil literature. It is the earliest Tamil text mentioning Gods often identified as Hindu deities. Mayyon as (Vishnu), Seyyon as (Skanda), Vendhan as (Indra), Varuna as (Varuna) and Kotṟavai as are the gods mentioned. The surviving manuscripts of the Tolkappiyam consists of three books (atikaram), each with nine chapters (iyal), with a cumulative total of 1,610 (483+463+664) sutras in the nūṛpā meter. It is a comprehensive text on grammar, and includes sutras on orthography, phonology, etymology, morphology, semantics, prosody, sentence structure and the significance of context in language.
Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies.
Giuseppe Simone Assemani (Classical Syriac : ܝܵܘܣܸܦ ܒܲܪ ܫܸܡܥܘܿܢ, was a librarian, Lebanese Maronite orientalist, and Catholic bishop. For his efforts, and his encyclopedic knowledge, he earned the nickname "The Great Assemani".
Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681–1732), better identified as Arnos Pathiri, was a German Jesuit priest and missionary, best known for his contributions as a Malayalam and Sanskrit poet, grammarian, lexicographer, and philologist. He lived in India for most part of his life and became a scholar of Sanskrit and Malayalam languages before authoring Puthen Pana, a poem on the life of Jesus Christ, Malayalam–Portuguese Dictionary, the first dictionary in Malayalam as well as two linguistic treatises, Malayalavyaakaranam and Sidharoopam.
Professor Johann Georg Bühler was a German scholar of ancient Indian languages and law.
Wenceslas Pantaleon Kirwitzer was an astronomer and a Jesuit missionary. His name in China was Qi Weicai (祁維材).
Matthias Bel or Matthias Bél was a Lutheran pastor and polymath from the Kingdom of Hungary. Bel was active in the fields of pedagogy, philosophy, philology, history, and theoretical theology; he was the founder of Hungarian geographic science and a pioneer of descriptive ethnography and economy. A leading figure in pietism. He is also known as the Great Ornament of Hungary.
Pāṇini was a logician, Sanskrit philologist, grammarian, and revered scholar in ancient India, variously dated between the 6th and 4th century BCE.
Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi was an Italian Christian Hebraist. He studied in Ivrea and Turin. In October 1769, he was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Parma, where he spent the rest of his life. His inaugural lecture on the causes of the neglect of Hebrew study was published in 1769 at Turin.
Hinduism is a minor religion in Croatia.
John Denver Faris is an American Chorbishop of the Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch, serving the Maronite Catholic Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. He is a canon lawyer of the Eastern Catholic Church, and an expert called upon for dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Christian Churches.
Adolf Friedrich Stenzler was a German Indologist born in Wolgast.
The Hanxleden family is a Westphalian noble family whose seat is the village of Hanxleden, today part of Schmallenberg in the district of Hochsauerland in Germany. In the 14th and 15th centuries the family provided several bailiffs (Amtmänner) of Fredeburg.
The Arte da Lingoa Canarim, the grammar of the Konkani language, was composed by the 16th-century English Jesuit priest Father Thomas Stephens, thus making Konkani the first among the modern Indian languages to have its grammar codified and described. The system was expanded upon by Diogo Ribeiro and four other Jesuits and printed in Rachol in the year 1640. A second edition was then developed and introduced in 1857 by J.H. da Cunha Rivara, who possessed a great passion for Konkani. Consequently, three versions of the Arte exist:
- Arte da lingoa Canari. MS held by the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
- Arte da lingoa Canarim, composed by Padre Thomaz Estevão and Padre Diogo Ribeiro of the Company of Jesus & amended by other Padres of the same company. 1640.
Carlo Formichi was an Italian linguist, Anglicist and orientalist, English and Sanskrit Scholar. He took a keen interest in Buddhism and Hindu philosophy.
Ludo Rocher (1926–2016) was an eminent Sanskrit scholar, and the W. Norman Brown Professor Emeritus of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Reinhold Rost (1822–1896) was a German orientalist, who worked for most of his life at St Augustine's Missionary College, Canterbury in England and as head librarian at the India Office Library, London.
Zdravka Matišić is a Croatian Indologist and Professor at the Department of Oriental Studies and Hungarian Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy at Zagreb University.
