Jean François Pons, SJ (1688–1752) was a French

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

who pioneered the study of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

in the West. He published a survey of

Sanskrit literature Sanskrit literature is a broad term for all literature composed in Sanskrit. 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 some ...

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, Sinner,

Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...

, Monboddo, Halhed, Beauzée, and Hervás, and was plagiarized by John Cleland (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 Linguists of Sanskrit French expatriates in India