Historedia
Episode 1 of 1

Third Anniversary Discourse

When
2 February 1786
Where
Calcutta
Part of
William Jones' Lecture on Sanskrit

Jones delivered a speech to the Asiatic Society proposing a common origin for Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.

Delivered on 2 February 1786, the discourse argued that the structural similarities between these languages indicated a shared ancestral source. Jones described Sanskrit as more perfect than Greek and more copious than Latin, yet closely related to both in grammar and verb roots.

Sources

  1. William Jones (philologist) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-07
  2. The Asiatic Society Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-18

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.