This is about the philologist. For the Theodor Benfey who developed a spiral periodic table of the elements in 1964 -- Otto Theodor Benfey (1925- ) -- see Alternative periodic tables

Alternative periodic tables

Alternative periodic tables are tabulations of chemical elements differing significantly in their organization from the traditional depiction of the Periodic System. Several have been devised, often purely for didactic reasons, as not all correlations between the chemical elements are effectively...

.

Theodor Benfey (January 28, 1809, Nörten

Nörten-Hardenberg

Nörten-Hardenberg is a municipality in the district of Northeim, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the river Leine, approx. 10 km southwest of Northeim, and 10 km north of Göttingen.- References :...

 near Göttingen

Göttingen

Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...

 – June 26, 1881, Göttingen) 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...

 philologist and the son of a Jewish trader from Nörten

Nörten-Hardenberg

Nörten-Hardenberg is a municipality in the district of Northeim, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the river Leine, approx. 10 km southwest of Northeim, and 10 km north of Göttingen.- References :...

 in Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...

. In 1834 he became a Privatdozent

Privatdozent

Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...

 (associate professor) at the University of Göttingen, teaching
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...

 and Comparative Grammar

Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...

.

Although originally destined for the medical profession, Benfey's taste for philology was awakened by a careful instruction in Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 which he received from his father. After brilliant studies at Göttingen he spent a year at Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, where he was greatly impressed by the lectures of Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...

 and Thiersch, and afterwards settled as a teacher in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

.

Benfey's pursuits were at first chiefly classical, and his attention was diverted to 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...

 by an accidental wager that he would learn enough of the language in a few weeks to be able to review a new book upon it. This feat he accomplished, and rivalled in later years when he learned Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 in order to translate V. P. Vasilev's work on Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. For the time, however, his labours were chiefly in classical and Semitic philology

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

. At Göttingen, whither he had returned as Privatdozent

Privatdozent

Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...

, he wrote a little work on the names of the Hebrew months, proving that they were derived from the Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, prepared the great article on India in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopaedia, and published from 1839 to 1842 the Lexicon of Greek Roots which gained him the Volney prize

Volney prize

The Prix Volney is awarded by the Institute of France after proposition by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres to a work of comparative philology....

 of the Institute of France.

From this time Benfey's attention was principally given to Sanskrit. In 1848 he became an assistant professor, and published his edition of the Sama-veda; in 1852–1854 his Manual of Sanskrit, comprising a grammar and chrestomathy; in 1858 his practical Sanskrit grammar, afterwards translated into English; and in 1859 his edition of the Panchatantra

Panchatantra

The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...

, with an extensive dissertation on the fables and mythologies of primitive nations. All these works had been produced under the pressure of poverty, the government, whether from parsimony or from prejudice against a Jew, refusing to make any substantial addition to his small salary as extra-professor at the university.

At length, in 1862, the growing appreciation of foreign scholars shamed it into making him an ordinary professor, and in 1866 Benfey published the laborious work by which he is on the whole best known, his great Sanskrit-English Dictionary. In 1869 he wrote a history of German philological research, especially Oriental, during the 19th century. In 1878 his jubilee (50th anniversary) as doctor was celebrated by the publication of a volume of philological essays dedicated to him and written by the first scholars in Germany. He had designed to close his literary labours by a grammar of Vedic Sanskrit, and was actively preparing it when he was interrupted by illness, which terminated in his death at Göttingen.

A collection of Benfey's various writings was published in 1890, prefaced by a memoir by his son. Among his pupils was James Murdoch

James Murdoch (Scottish journalist)

James Murdoch was a Scottish scholar and journalist, who worked as a teacher in the Empire of Japan and Australia. From 1903–1917, he wrote the three-volume A History of Japan, the first comprehensive history of Japan in the English language...

. Some of his ideas were developed in Russia by Fyodor Buslaev

Fyodor Buslaev

Fedor Ivanovich Buslaev ]], 1818, Kerensk, Penza Guberniya–July 31 , 1898, Moscow Guberniya) was a Russian philologist, art historian, and folklorist who represented the Mythological school of comparative literature and linguistics. He was profoundly influenced by Jacob Grimm and Theodor...

.

Selected works

• Lexicon of Greek Roots, 1839-1842.
• The Cuneiform Inscriptions, 1847.
• The Hymns of Sama-Veda, 1848.
• The History of Oriental Philosophy in Germany, 1868.
• A Practical Grammar of the Sanskrit Language for the Use of Early Students, 1868.
• A Sanskrit-English Dictionary: With References to the Best Edition of Sanskrit Author and Etymologies and Comparisons of Cognate Words Chiefly in Greek, Latin, Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, 1866