Sir William Jones

Sir William Jones (1746-94) was the foremost Orientalist of his generation, and one of the greatest intellectual explorers of all time. As a Sanskritist, poet, radical Whig, jurist, precursor of Romanticism, founder of modern linguistics, Indology, the disciplines of comparative literature, philology, mythology, and law, the range of his interests and accomplishments is extraordinary. At the age of twenty-six, 'Oriental' Jones was elected to Dr. Johnson's Literary Club. His legal career, which took him from the south Wales circuits to a judgeship on the Bengal Supreme Court, was marked by his passion for social justice. His principled independence, his contempt for despotic government, and his pro-American sympathies earned the friendship of Wilkes, Cartwright, and Franklin. Through his original poetic works, and his authoritative essays and translations, he did more to introduce Oriental elements into Western literature than any other scholar or poet. His translation of Sakuntala, in 1789, accomplished Oriental renaissance in the West and cultural revolution in India.