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Rudolf von Roth (born Walter Rudolph Roth, 3 April 1821 – 23 June 1895) was a German
Indologist Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') is o ...
, founder of the
Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the ...
philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...
. His chief work is a monumental
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
dictionary, compiled in collaboration with Otto von Böhtlingk.


Biography

Roth was born in
Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...
and educated at the universities of Tübingen and
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. He continued his studies in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
and
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, and in 1848 was appointed as extraordinary professor of Oriental languages in Tübingen University, becoming a full professor and principal librarian in 1856. He died in 1895 in Tübingen.


Works

His chief work is the monumental ''Sanskrit Wörterbuch'' (Sanskrit dictionary, 7 vols., Saint Petersburg, 1853–1895), compiled in collaboration with Otto von Böhtlingk and published by the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He edited Yaska's ''
Nirukta ''Nirukta'' ( sa, निरुक्त, , "explained, interpreted") is one of the six ancient Vedangas, or ancillary science connected with the Vedas – the scriptures of Hinduism.James Lochtefeld (2002), "Nirukta" in The Illustrated Encyclope ...
'' (1852) and, with Whitney, the '' Atharva Veda'' (1856–1857). A list of Roth's main writings, and further sources on his life and work, can be found in the article "German Indology." The original works of Roth include: ''Zur Litteratur und Geschichte des Veda'' (On the literature and history of the Veda, 1846), a ground-breaking work on Vedic scholarship and research; ''Ueber den Mythus von den fünf Menschengeschlechtern'' ("On the myth of the five races of humans", 1860); ''Ueber die Vorstellung vom Schicksal in der indischen Sprachweisheit'' ("On the representation of fate in Indian wisdom literature", 1866); ''Der Atharva-Veda in Kaschmir'' (1875); and ''Ueber Yaçna 31'' (1876). Roth was made an honorary member of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta. Although more progressive than an earlier generation of Protestant theologians, Roth was also deeply enmeshed in theology. Adluri and Bagchee argue that his newly created discipline of a so-called "universal history of religions" (''allgemeine Religionsgeschichte'') nominally secularized the discourse on religions, at the same time as it institutionalized Protestant ideas of religion (e.g., the idea of religious degeneracy, requiring a reformation to restore the true religion). Roth was additionally responsible for much of the criticisms of the tradition and anti-Brahmanism characteristic of German Indology.See Joydeep Bagchee:
German Indology
" In: Alf Hiltebeitel (Ed.), ''Oxford Bibliographies Online: Hinduism''. Oxford University Press, New York 2014


Notes


References

* Vishwa Adluri, Joydeep Bagchee: ''The Nay Science: A History of German Indology''. Oxford University Press, New York 2014,
''Introduction,''
p. 1–29). * Joydeep Bagchee:
German Indology
" In: Alf Hiltebeitel (Ed.), ''Oxford Bibliographies Online: Hinduism''. Oxford University Press, New York 2014. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Roth, Rudolf 1821 births 1895 deaths German Indologists German librarians University of Tübingen alumni University of Tübingen faculty Humboldt University of Berlin alumni German male non-fiction writers German Sanskrit scholars