Author: M Monier - Williams
E Leumann/C Cappeller
Editor(s): E Leumann / C Cappeller
Publisher: Bharatiya Granth Niketan
Year: 2004
Language: multilingual
Pages: 1333
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8189211005
Description
This classic work is etymologically and philologically arranged with special reference to cognate Indo-European languages. The work carries an elaborate introduction by the author.
This Dictionary, to which Sir Monier - Williams devoted so many years of labor, was completed by him a few days before his death, which took place at Cannes, in the south of France, on April 11,1899. It had been his hope to see this work published shortly after his return to England. Although, his desire was not granted, it was a satisfaction to him to know that the last revise had received his final corrections, and that the book would be issued from the University Press within a few weeks of his death.
FROM AUTHOR'S PREFACE:
The first edition of this Dictionary had the advantage of being published by the Delegates of the Oxford University Press, with the support of the Secretary of State for India in Council. The present greatly enlarged and improved work enjoys the same privileges. The first edition appeared in the summer of 1872. The extent of its indebtedness to the great seven-volumed Sanskrit-German Thesaurus compiled by the two eminent German Sanskritists, Otto Bohtlingk and Rudolf Roth, with the assistance of many distinguished scholars, such as Professor A Weber of Berlin-then only completed as far as the beginning of the letter v-was fully acknowledged by me in the Preface.
Having regard, however, to the entire originality of the plan of my own work, he did not venture to describe it as based on the great Sanskrit-German Worterbuch. For that plan He claimed to be alone responsible. Every particle of its detail was thought out in my own mind, and the whole work was brought to completion by me, with the co-operation of five successive assistants-whose names were duly recorded in about twelve years form the date of my election to the Boden Professorship in the University of Oxford.
The words and the meanings of the words of a Dictionary can scarcely be proved by its compilers to belong exclusively to themselves. It is not the mere aggregation of words and meanings, but the method of dealing with them and arranging them, which gives a Dictionary the best right to be called an original production.