Georg Buhler's Contribution to Indology.

• Author: Salomon, Richard

Georg Biihler's Contribution to Indology. By AMRUTA CHINTAMAN NATU. Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, vol. 12. Piscataway NJ: GORGIAS PRESS. 2020. Pp. xx + 235. $114.95 (cloth and PDF).

As the title suggests, this book, a revised version of the author's doctoral dissertation at Savitribai Phule Pune University (2015), is not a biography of the great pioneering Indologist Georg Biihler (1837-1898). Rather, it is a detailed study and critical analysis of his groundbreaking work in the last third of the nineteenth century in fields including manuscript collection, Dharmasastra, the Jain religion. Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit and Prakrit lexicography, and especially epigraphy and paleography, in which area he published no less than 159 articles over the last twenty-three years of his life. Among his many other outstanding achievements are the "epoch-making" (p. 46) translation of the The Laws ofMamt in the Sacred Books of the East series (1886), the long-definitive Indische Paldographie von circa 350 a. Chr.-circa 1300p. Chr. (1896), and the influential Leitfaden fiir den Elementarkursns des Sanskrit (1883). Equally important were his roles as founder and original editor of the Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskimde and as cofounder, with Franz Kielhorn, of the Bombay Sanskrit Series. Throughout his career Biihler was an awesomely productive scholar, with "writings encompassing almost every branch of Indology" (p. 1). including, for example, no less than thirty-five articles in a single year (1892).

After spending seventeen years (1863-80) in India as teacher, educational administrator, and especially manuscript collector, Biihler returned to Europe to take up in 1881 the newly created Professorship of Indian Philology and Archaeology at the University of Vienna, which position he held until the time of his death by drowning in Lake Constance on April 8, 1898. His life is richly documented in obituaries and other publications that appeared immediately after his death, sixteen of which were compiled in volume 27 of the Indian Antiquary (pp. 337-86). headed by a detailed appreciation by Buhler's greatest student. Moritz Winternitz (pp. 337-55). Besides such well-known materials, Natu was also able to make use of several collections of Buhler's letters (compiled in Appendix III, Letters and Papers Related to Georg Biihler, pp. 217-23) as well as some family information provided to her by Martin Biihler, great-grandson of...