Jean François Pons (1688–1752) was a French

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

who pioneered the study of

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 ...

in the West. He published a survey of

Sanskrit literature Sanskrit literature broadly comprises all literature in the Sanskrit language. This includes texts composed in the earliest attested descendant of the Proto-Indo-Aryan language known as Vedic Sanskrit, texts in Classical Sanskrit as well as s ...

in 1743, where he described the language as "admirable for its harmony, copiousness, and energy", reporting on the parsimony of the native grammatical tradition, informing the works of de Brosses,

Dow Dow or DOW may refer to: Business * Dow Jones Industrial Average, or simply the Dow, a stock market index * Dow Inc., an American commodity chemical company ** Dow Chemical Company, a subsidiary, an American multinational chemical corporation ...

, Sinner,

Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his ...

Monboddo James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (baptised 25 October 1714; died 26 May 1799) was a Scottish judge, scholar of linguistic evolution, philosopher and deist. He is most famous today as a founder of modern comparative historical linguistics. In 1767 ...

, Halhed, Beauzée, and

Hervás Hervás (; ext, Ervás) is a Spanish town in the north of the province of Cáceres. It had 3,839 inhabitants in 2005. It is 120 km from Cáceres and 90 km far from Salamanca. It is the capital of the Valle de Ambroz comarca in the ...

, and was plagiarized by

John Cleland John Cleland (c. 1709, baptised – 23 January 1789) was an English novelist best known for his fictional '' Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure'', whose eroticism led to his arrest. James Boswell called him "a sly, old malcont ...

(1778).

References

*Rosane Rocher, "Discovery of Sanskrit by Europeans" in ''Concise history of the language sciences from the Sumerians to the cognitivists'', E. F. K. Koerner & R. E. Asher (eds.), 1995, p. 188. *Rosane Rocher, ''Lord Monboddo, Sanskrit and Comparative Linguistics'', Journal of the American Oriental Society (1980). * H.W. Bodewitz, ''De late ‘ontdekking’ van het Sanskrit en de Oudindische cultuur in Europa'', Leiden University thesis (2002

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pons, Jean-Francois 18th-century French Jesuits French philologists French Indologists 1688 births 1752 deaths