Moriz Winternitz(Horn,December 23, 1863 –Prague,January 9, 1937) was a scholar fromAustriawho began hisIndologycontributions working withMax Müllerat the Oxford University.[1][2]An eminent Sanskrit scholar, he worked as a professor inPraguein the German part ofCharles-Ferdinand Universityafter 1902, for nearly thirty years.[2][3]HisGeschichte der indischen Literatur,published 1908–1922, offered a comprehensive literary history of Sanskrit texts.[4]The contributions on a wide range of Sanskrit texts by Winternitz have been an influential resource for modern era studies onHinduism,BuddhismandJainism.[5]
Education
editAn AustrianOrientalist,he received his earliest education in thegymnasiumof his native town, and in 1880 entered theUniversity of Vienna,receiving the degree ofDoctor of Philosophyin 1886. In 1888 he went toOxford,where until 1892 he assisted the preparation of the second edition of theRig-Veda(4 vols., Oxford, 1890–92), collating manuscripts and deciding on the adoption of many new readings. Winternitz remained in Oxford until 1898, acting in various educational capacities, such as German lecturer to theAssociation for Promoting the Higher Education of Women(1891–98), librarian of theIndian Instituteat Oxford (1895), and frequently as examiner in German andSanskritboth for the university and for theIndian Civil Service.
Work
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In 1899, attending the Oriental Congress in Rome, he proposed the establishment of a society dedicated to studying Sanskrit texts, and particularly noted the need for a new critical edition of the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata.[6]In that same year, he went toCharles-Ferdinand Universityin Prague asprivatdozentfor Indology and generalethnology,and in 1902 was appointed to the professorship of Sanskrit (made vacant by the retirement of Ludwig) and of ethnology. The Winternitz family were friendly withAlbert Einstein,when he was in Prague around 1911.
Rabindranath Tagorevisited Prague in 1920 and met Winternitz. On an invitation from the poet, he went toSantiniketanand worked as a visiting professor from February 1923 to September 1924.[7]During this time in India, he continued his advocacy for Mahabharata studies, working with theBhandarkar Oriental Research Instituteand advising them in editing their critical editions of the Mahabharata.[6]He additionally published several research papers that studied the Mahabharata, including analyses on versions of the epic common in South India, and studies of the figure of Ganesha in the epic.[6]
Among his students wereVincenc Lesný,Wilhelm GampertandOtto Stein,who themselves went on to become prominent Indologists.
In addition to valuable contributions on Sanskrit and ethnology to various scientific journals, Winternitz edited theApastambiya Gṛihyasutra(Vienna, 1887) and theMantrapaṭha, or the Prayer-Book of the Apastambins(part i, Oxford, 1897); translated Müller'sAnthropological Religionand hisTheosophy, or Psychological Religioninto German (Leipzig, 1894–95); and publishedDas Altindische Hochzeitsrituell(Vienna, 1892), which also contains valuable ethnological material;A Catalogue of South Indian Manuscripts Belonging to theRoyal Asiatic Societyof Great Britain and Ireland(London, 1902); andGeschichte der Indischen Literatur(part i, Leipzig, 1905). He also published expansive studies of Indian literature, publishing a two-volume book on the same.[6]
See also
edit- Moriz Winternitz(Longer biography, in German)
- Wilhelm Winternitz
References
edit- ^Douglas McGetchin (2010), Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism: Ancient India's Rebirth in Modern Germany, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,ISBN978-0838642085,page 107
- ^abIsidore Singer and Cyrus Adler,The Jewish Encyclopedia: Talmud-Zweifel,p. 536, atGoogle Books,Volume XII,Article on Winternitz, Moriz
- ^Robert Grafrik (2015), Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist Literatures and Cultures, Internationale Forschungen Zur Allgemeinen Und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft (Editor: Dobrota Pucherova), Brill Academic,ISBN978-9004303843,page 286
- ^Sheldon Pollock (2003), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, University of California Press,ISBN978-0520228214,page 5-6
- ^Brian Black and Dean Patton (2015), Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Traditions, Ashgate,ISBN978-1409440123,pages 79-80 with footnote 2, 81 with footnote 10,Text link1,Text link2,Text link3
- ^abcdSukthankar, V. S. (1937)."IN MEMORIAM: Professor Moritz Winternitz (1863-1937)".Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.18(3): 313–320.ISSN0378-1143.JSTOR41688364.
- ^"Moriz Winternitz (1863-1937".Great Personalities.Visva Bharati.Retrieved15 August2019.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Jacobs, Joseph; Gray, Louis H. (1906)."Moriz Winternitz".InSinger, Isidore;et al. (eds.).The Jewish Encyclopedia.Vol. XII. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 536.