[Gutenberg 44259] • William Dwight Whitney

[...]quickness of perception and unerring exactness of acquisition soon made it evident that the teacher and the taught must change places." In 1850 Mr. Whitney went to Germany and spent three winter semesters in studying with Weber, Bopp, and Lepsius in Berlin, and two summer semesters at work with Roth in Tubingen. At the suggestion of Roth he undertook with this master the publication of the Atharva-Veda, and copied and collated the Berlin MSS of this work. In 1852 he sent to the American Oriental Society a paper, read at their October meeting of that year, on 'The main results of the later Vedic researches in Germany.' A letter from Weber, dated at Berlin, Dec. 28, 1852, is interesting in this connection on several accounts. He writes: "I hope ere long Sanskrit studies will flourish in America more than in England, where with the only exception of the venerable and not-to-be-praised-enough Professor Wilson[...]."