The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany | Page 7

are most famous in connection with Persia. And that books of travel were much read in Germany is attested by the number of editions and translations which appeared there. Thus among the earliest books printed there we have a translation of Marco Polo (Nuremberg), 1477,[50] reprinted repeatedly, e.g. at Augsburg, 1481, in the Novus Orbis, 1534 (Latin version), at Basle, 1534 (German translation of the preceding), while Mandeville's memoirs were so popular as to become finally a Volksbuch.[51]
The account of Olearius is of special interest to us. It gives an excellent description of Persia, and above all it gives us valuable information on the literature and language. Olearius is struck by the similarity of many Persian words to corresponding words in German and Latin, and hints at the kinship of these idioms, though, looking only at the vocabulary and not at the structure, he supposes Persian to be related to Arabic.[52] He tells us of the high esteem in which poetry was held by the Persians, and notices that rhyme is an indispensable requisite of their poetic art. He also mentions some of their leading poets, among them Sa'di, Hafid, Firdausi and Nidami.[53]

But what interests us most is the translation which he made of the Gulistan_, published in 1654, under the title of Persianischer Rosenthal_. True, it was not the first in point of time. As early as 1634 du Ryer had published at Paris an incomplete French version, and shortly afterwards this version was translated into German by Johann Friedrich Ochsenbach of Tübingen, but apparently without attracting much notice.[54] In 1644, Levin Warner of Leyden had given the Persian text and Latin version of a number of Sa'di's maxims,[55] while Gentius had published the whole text with a Latin translation at Amsterdam in 1651. But it was the version of Olearius that really introduced the Gulistan to Europe.
The edition of Olearius, from which we have cited, contains also a translation of the Bustan_, called _Der Persianische Baumgarten, made, however, not directly from the Persian, but from a Dutch version. Besides this, the edition contains also the narratives of two other travellers, Jürgen Andersen and Volquard Iversen, as well as an account of Persia by the French missionary Sanson. Iversen, in speaking of the Parsi religion, gives an essentially correct account of the Zoroastrian hierarchy, of the supreme god and his seven servants, each presiding over some special element, evidently an allusion to Ahura Mazda and his six Amesha Spentas, with the possible addition of Sraosha.[56] Sanson states that the Gavres have kept up the old Persian language and that it is entirely different from modern Persian,[57] a distinct recognition of the existence of the Avestan language. The eighteenth century saw the discovery of the Avesta by Anquetil du Perron, and its close found men like Jones, Revizky, de Sacy and Hammer busily engaged in spreading a knowledge of Persian literature in Europe.

India, as far as its literature was concerned, did not fare so well. The struggles of European nations for the mastery of that rich empire did little towards promoting a knowledge of its religion or its language. Nor were the efforts of missionaries very successful. Most of their attention was devoted to the Dravidian idioms of Southern India, not to Sanskrit. We have the authority of Friedrich Schlegel for the statement that before his time there were but two Germans who were known to have gained a knowledge of the sacred language, the missionary Heinrich Roth and the Jesuit Hanxleben.[58] Even their work was not published and was superseded by that of Jones, Colebrooke and others. Most valuable information on Hindu religion was given by the Dutch preacher Abraham Roger in his well known book _De Open-Deure tot het Verborgen Heydendom_, published at Leyden in 1651, two years after the author's death. This book also gave to the West the first specimen of Sanskrit literature in the shape of a Dutch version of two hundred maxims of Bhartrhari, not a direct translation from the Sanskrit, but based on oral communication imparted by a learned Brahman Padmanaba.[59] As a rule the rendering is very faithful, sometimes even literal. The maxims were translated into German by C. Arnold and were published at Nuremberg in 1663.
This, however, ended the progress of Sanskrit literature in Europe for the time being. Information came in very slowly. The _Lettres édifiantes_ of the Jesuits, and the accounts of travellers like Sonnerat began to shed additional light on the religious customs of India, but its sacred language remained a secret. In 1785, Herder wrote that what Europe knew of Hindu literature was only late legends, that the Sanskrit language as well as the genuine Veda would probably for a long time remain unknown.[60] Sir William Jones, however, had founded the Asiatic Society a year before and