was first awakened in 1848, and he at once devoted himself with enthusiasm to this at that time little-explored field of philological labour. After a brief course at Yale with Professor Edward Elbridge Salisbury (1814-1901), then the only trained Orientalist in the United States, Whitney went to Germany (1850) and studied for three years at Berlin, under Weber, Bopp and Lepsius, and at Tübingen (two summer semesters) under Roth, returning to the United States in 1853. In the following year he was appointed professor of Sanskrit in Yale, and in 1869 also of comparative philology. He also gave instruction in French and German in the college until 1867, and in the Sheffield scientific school until 1886. An urgent call to a professorship at Harvard was declined in 1869. The importance of his contributions to science was early and widely recognized. He was elected to membership in numerous learned societies in all parts of the world, and received many honorary degrees, the most notable testimonial to his fame being his election on the 31st of May 1881, as foreign knight of the Prussian order pour le mérite for science and arts to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Carlyle. In 1870 he received from the Berlin Academy of Sciences the first Bopp prize for the most important contribution to Sanskrit philology during the preceding three years his edition of the Tāittirīya-Prātiçākhya (Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. ix.). He died at New Haven, Connecticut, on the 7th of June 1894.
As a philologist Whitney is noted especially for his work in Sanskrit, which placed him among the first scholars of his time. He edited (1855-1856), with Professor Roth, the Atharva-Veda-Sanhitā; published (1862) with a translation and notes the Atharva-Veda-Prātiçākhya; made important contributions to the great Petersburg lexicon; issued an index verborum to the published text of the Atharva-Veda (Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1881); made a translation of the Atharva-Veda, books i.-xix., with a critical commentary, which he did not live to publish (edited by Lanman, 1905); and published a large number of special articles upon various points of Sanskrit philology. His most notable achievement in this field, however, is his Sanskrit Grammar (1879), a work which, as Professor Delbrück has said, not only is “the best text-book of Sanskrit which we possess,” but also places its author, as a scientific grammarian, on the same level with such writers as Madvig and Krüger. To the general public Whitney is best known through his popular works on the science of language and his labours as a lexicographer. The former are, perhaps, the most widely read of all English books on the subject, and have merited their popularity through the soundness of the views which they present and the lucidity of their style.[1] His most important service to lexicography was his guidance, as editor-in-chief, of the work on The Century Dictionary (1889-1891). Apart from the permanent value of his contributions to philology, Whitney is notable for the great and stimulating influence which he exerted throughout his life upon the development of American scholarship.
The chronological bibliography of Whitney's writings appended to vol. xix. (first half) of the Journal of the American Oriental Society, issued in May 1897, contains 360 numbers. Of these the most important, in addition to those mentioned above, are: Translation of the Sūryasiddhānta, a Text-book of Hindu Astronomy (Jour. Am. Oriental Soc., vol. vi., 1860); Language and the Study of Language (1867); A Compendious German Grammar (1869); Oriental and Linguistic Studies (1873; second series, 1874); The Life and Growth of Language (1875); Essentials of English Grammar (1877); A Compendious German and English Dictionary (1877); A Practical French Grammar (1886); Max Müller and the Science of Language (1892).
(B. E. S.)
WHITSTABLE, a watering-place in the St Augustine's parliamentary division of Kent, England, on the north coast at the east end of the Swale, 6 m. N.N.W. of Canterbury, on the South Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 7086. The branch railway connecting Whitstable with Canterbury was one of the earliest in England, opened in 1830. The church of All Saints (Decorated and Perpendicular) possesses some old brasses; it was restored in 1875. Whitstable has been famous for its oyster beds from time immemorial. The fisheries were held by the Incorporated Company of Dredgers (incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1793), the affairs being administered by a foreman, deputy foreman and jury of twelve; but in 1896 an Act of Parliament transferred the management of the fishery to a company. The less extensive Seasalter and Ham oyster fishery adjoins. There is also a considerable coasting trade in coal in conjunction with the South-Eastern & Chatham railway company, who are the owners of the harbour, which accommodates vessels of about 400 tons alongside the quay. The urban district consists of parts of the old parishes of Whitstable and Seasalter. In modern times the manor was held by Wynne Ellis (1790-1875), who left a valuable collection of paintings to the nation.
Tankerton, adjoining Whitstable to the N.E., is a newly established seaside resort.
WHITSUNDAY, or Pentecost (Lat. Pentecoste, Gr. πεντηκοστή sc. ὴµέρα, Fr. Pentecôte, Ger. Pfingsten, fr. O. H. Ger. fimfchustin), one of the principal feasts of the Christian Church, celebrated on the fiftieth (πεντηκοστή) day after Easter to commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. The day became one of the three baptismal seasons, and the name Whitsunday is now generally attributed to the white garments formerly worn by the candidates for baptism on this feast, as in the case of the Dominica in albis. The festival is the third in importance of the great feasts of the Church and the last of the annual cycle commemorating the Lord. It is connected with the Jewish Pentecost (q.v.), not only in the historical date of its origin (see Acts vii.), but in idea; the Jewish festival is one of thanks for the first-fruits of the earth, the Christian for the first-fruits of the Spirit. In the early Church the name of Pentecost was given to the whole fifty days between Easter and Whitsunday, which were celebrated as a period of rejoicing (Tertullian, De idolatr. c. 12, De bapt. 19, De cor. milit. 3, Apost. Canons, c. 37, Canons of Antioch, 30). In the narrower sense, as the designation of the fiftieth day of this period, the word Pentecost occurs for the first time in a canon of the council of Elvira (305), which denounces as an heretical abuse the tendency to celebrate the 40th day (Ascension) instead of the 50th, and adds: “juxta auctoritatem scripturarum cuncti diem Pentecostis celebremus.” There is plentiful evidence that the festival was regarded very early as one of the great feasts; Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. xliv. De Pentec.) calls it the “day of the Spirit” (ὴµέρα τοῦ Πνεύµατος), and in 385 the Peregrinatio Silviae (see Duchesne, Origines, App.) describes its elaborate celebration at Jerusalem. The code of Theodosius (xv. 5, De spectaculis) forbade theatrical performances and the games of the circus during the feast. The custom of hallowing the days immediately surrounding the festival is comparatively late. Thus, among others, the synod of Mainz in 813 ordered the celebration of an octave similar to that at Easter. The custom of celebrating the vigil by fasting had already been introduced. The duration of the festival was, however, ultimately fixed at three days. In the Church of England this is still the rule (there are special collects, gospels and epistles for Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun week); in the Lutheran churches two days only are observed.
In the middle ages the Whitsun services were marked by many curious customs. Among these described by Durandus (Rationale div. off. vi. 107) are the letting down of a dove from the roof into the church, the dropping of balls of fire, rose-leaves and the like. Whitsun is one of the Scottish quarter-days, and though the Church festival is movable, the legal date was fixed for the 15th of May by an act of 1693. Whitmonday, which, with the Sunday itself, was the occasion for the greatest of all the medieval church ales, was made an English Bank Holiday by an act passed on the 25th of May 1871.
See Duchesne, Origines du culte Chrétien (1889); W. Smith and Cheetham, Dic. of Christian Antiquities (1874-1880); Herzog-Hauck,
- ↑ They are particularly important in that they counteracted the popular and interestingly written books of Max Müller: for instance, Müller, like Renan and Wilhelm von Humboldt, regarded language as an innate faculty and Whitney considered it the product of experience and outward circumstance. See Whitney's article Philology in the present edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
