Otto von Bohtlingk
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Otto von Bohtlingk (May 30 1815 - April 1 1904) was a German Sanskrit scholar, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Having studied Oriental languages, particularly Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, at the university of St. Petersburg, he continued his studies in Germany, first in Berlin and then (1839-1842) in Bonn. Returning to St Petersburg in 1842, he was attached to the Royal Academy of Sciences, and was elected an ordinary member of that society in 1855. In 1860 he was made Russian state councillor, and later privy councillor with a title of nobility. In 1868 he settled at Jena, and in 1885 removed to Leipzig, where he resided until his death there.
Bohtlingk was one of the most distinguished scholars of the nineteenth century, and his works are of pre-eminent value in the field of Indian and comparative philology. His first great work was an edition of Panini's Grammatik (Bonn, 1839-1840), which was in reality a criticism of Franz Bopp's philological methods.
This book Bohtlingk again took up forty-seven years later, when he republished it with a complete translation under the title Panini's Grammatik mit Ubersetzung (Leipzig, 1887). The earlier edition was followed by:
- Vopadevas Grammatik (St Petersburg, 1847)
- Uber die Sprache der Jakuten (St Petersburg, 1851)
- Indische Sprache (2nd ed. in 3 parts, St Petersburg, 1870-1873, to which an index was published by Blau, Leipzig, 1893)
- a critical examination and translation of Chandogya-upanishad (St Petersburg, 1889)
- a translation of Brihad-Aranyaka-upanishad (St. Petersburg, 1889)
In addition to these he published several smaller treatises, notably one on the Sanskrit accents, Uber den Accent im Sanskrit (1843).
But his magnum opus is his great Sanskrit dictionary, Sanskrit-Worterbuch (7 vols., St Petersburg, 1853-1875; new ed. 7 vols, St Petersburg, 1879-1889), which with the assistance of his two friends, Rudolf Roth (d. 1895) and Albrecht Weber (b. 1825), was completed in twenty-three years.sv:Otto von Böhtlingk