Rudolf von Roth was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Indologist, founder of the Vedic

Vedas

The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....

 philology

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

. His chief work is a monumental Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 dictionary, compiled in collaboration with Otto von Böhtlingk

Otto von Bohtlingk

Otto von Böhtlingk was a German Indologist and Sanskrit scholar. His magnum opus was a Sanskrit dictionary.-Biography:He was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia...

.

Biography

He was educated at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

. He continued his studies in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and in 1848 received the appointment of extraordinary professor of Oriental languages in Tübingen University, becoming full professor and principal librarian in 1856.

Works

His chief work is the monumental Sanskrit Wörterbuch (Sanskrit dictionary, 7 vols., Saint Petersburg, 1853–1895), compiled in collaboration with Otto von Böhtlingk and published by the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He edited Yaska

Yaska

' ) was a Sanskrit grammarian who preceded Pāṇini , assumed to have been active in the 5th or 6th century BC.He is the author of the Nirukta, a technical treatise on etymology, lexical category and the semantics of words...

's Nirukta

Nirukta

Nirukta is one of the six disciplines of Hinduism, treating etymology, particularly of obscure words, especially those occurring in the Vedas. The discipline is traditionally attributed to , an ancient Sanskrit grammarian...

(1852) and, with Whitney

William Dwight Whitney

William Dwight Whitney was an American linguist, philologist, and lexicographer who edited The Century Dictionary.-Life:William Dwight Whitney was born in Northampton, Massachusetts on February 9, 1827. His father was Josiah Dwight Whitney of the New England Dwight family...

, the Atharva Veda (1856–1857).

His original works include: Zur Litteratur und Geschichte des Veda (On the literature and history of the Veda, 1846), a ground-breaking work on Vedic scholarship and research; Ueber den Mythus von den fünf Menschengeschlechtern (The myth of the five races of humans, 1860); Ueber die Vorstellung vom Schicksal in der indischen Sprachweisheit (The representation of fate in Indian wisdom literature, 1866); Der Atharva-Veda in Kaschmir (1875); and Ueber Yaçna 31 (1876).

He was selected as an honorary member of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta.