The New International Encyclopædia/Jacobi, Hermann Georg

JACOBI, Hermann Georg (1850—). A German Sanskrit scholar, born at Cologne. He was educated there, and at Bonn and Berlin, where he devoted himself to Sanskrit under Gildemeister and Weber. In 1889 he was made professor at Bonn, after teaching and lecturing at Münster (1876-85) and Kiel (1885-89). Possibly his most important work is in Indian chronology: “The Computation of Hindu Dates in Inscriptions,” published in Epigraphica Indica (1892). His dating of the Rig-Veda, Ueber das Alter des Rigveda (1893), on astronomical grounds, puts the time much earlier than the usual estimate. His other works, on comparative philology, Prakrit grammar, Sanskrit literature, and Jainism, include: Kalpasūtra of Bhadrabāhn (1879); Acārānga Sūtra of the Çvetāmbara Jains (1882); Sthaviravali Charita (1891); and translations of the Acārānga, Kalpa, Uttarādhyayana, and Sutrakritānga Sūtra in the Sacred Books of the East, vols. xxii. and xlv. (1884-95); Ausgewählte Erzählungen in Māhārāshtrī (1886); Das Rāmāyana (1893); and, in syntax, Kompositum und Nebensatz. Studien über die indogermanische Sprachentwicklung (1897).