William Jones' Lecture on Sanskrit
- When
- 1786
- Where
- Calcutta
- Episodes
- 1
On 2 February 1786, Sir William Jones delivered his Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. He argued that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin shared a common ancestral source, a hypothesis that is widely cited as the foundation for modern comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies.
Episodes
Background and detail
The 1786 Discourse. In his Third Anniversary Discourse, Jones proposed that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin were related to a common source that no longer existed. He noted strong affinities in verb roots and grammar, suggesting Gothic, Celtic, and Persian languages also shared this origin. This speech is often cited as the beginning of comparative linguistics.
People involved
- Sir William Jones · Philologist, Judge, and Founder of the Asiatic Society
- The Asiatic Society · Learned society in Calcutta
Sources
- William Jones (philologist) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-07
- 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.