Benfey

A distinguished philologist, who was born near Göttingen in 1809. He pursued the study of classical philology at the universities of Göttingen, Munich, Frankfort, and Heidelberg, and later won distinction by his Lexicon of Greek Roots (Berlin, 1839), and by his edition of the Sâma Veda (Leipzig, 1848)—a work which laid the foundation for the scientific study of the Vedas. He also published a Sanskrit grammar, with a chrestomathy and glossary (Leipzig, 1854), a shorter Sanskrit grammar (London, 1868), and a Sanskrit-English dictionary (London, 1866). In his magazine Orient und Occident he published, in 1863-64, a translation of the first maNDala of the Rig Veda. To comparative mythology and folk-lore he contributed a translation of the Panchatantra, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1859).

In 1862, Dr. Benfey was made Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at the University of Göttingen, a chair which he continued to fill until his death in 1881. He left unfinished a Vedic grammar, for which he had collected a large mass of material. His only work in classical literature was his earliest publication—a translation of Terence (Stuttgart, 1837).

No scholar did more than Benfey to enlarge the range of the study of Sanskrit, a work to which he brought the zeal of an enthusiast. As a comparative philologist he was in some respects a follower of Franz Bopp (q.v.), from whom, however, he deviated in deriving all IndoEuropean words from monosyllabic primitive verbs, a conception which depends upon his theory of the origin of stem suffixes. These he regarded as nearly all derived from a fundamental radical √ ant appearing in the present participle of verbs. In his defence of this singular thesis he is obliged to assume permutations of sound that violate the most elementary laws of the science of phonology. His view is to be found set forth both in his Lexicon of Greek Roots, in his Sanskrit grammar, and in numerous essays.