In 1873, a twenty-five-year-old Scotsman was appointed as the professor of Oriental Languages and Sanskrit at Elphinstone College, Bombay. His name was Peter Peterson. The son of a prominent merchant from the Shetlands, Peter earned his first masters degree from The University of Edinburgh, studying under the German Sanskrit scholar Simon Theodor Aufrecht. Later, he went to the University of Oxford and trained under two outstanding Sanskrit scholars – Monier-Williams and Friedrich Max Müller.
A brilliant student, Peter was awarded the prestigious Boden scholarship. But his appointment as a professor at the age of twenty-five was caught in the eye of a storm.
Why was his appointment controversial? Was it Peter’s age and lack of experience? Or is there more to this controversy? The answer lies in the growth of Indology as a field of study and academic competition between the German and English scholars.
As an academic discipline, ‘Indology’ was born in Europe. It gained traction after universities inducted professorial positions and endowed chairs in the study of Sanskrit manuscripts. In 1814, the College de France, Paris, established the first Chair of Sanskrit studies. However, Germany emerged as the epicenter of the modern study of Sanskrit. In 1819, August Wilhelm von Schlegel became the first Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Bonn, Germany. England was, in fact, a latecomer to Sanskrit studies – the University of Oxford set up the Boden Chair in Sanskrit only decades later, in 1832.
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