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have been conquered successively by Goths, Huns, Vandals and Tartars, and lastly by the British; then suppose a court of judicature to be established by the British parliament, at Athens, and an inquisitive Englishman to be one of the judges; suppose him to learn Greek there, which none of his countrymen knew, and to read Homer, Pindar, Plato, which no other European had ever heard of. Such am I in this country; substituting Sanskrit for Greek, the Brahmins for the priests of Jupiter, and Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa for Homer, Plato and Pindar.
    Jones had no doubts that Sanskrit literature, like the language itself, was in every way the equal of Greek or Latin literature. He was now, in 1787, translating a drama by Kalidasa, ‘theIndian Shakespeare’. Completed in 1788 and published the following year, Sakuntala fully justified his expectations. It was the first Sanskrit work to be translated purely for its literary merit. Despite the omission of some passages too bold for contemporary tastes – like the one detailing the heroine’s swelling breasts – the comparison of Kalidasa with Shakespeare was not excessively partisan. Sakuntala was strongly reminiscent of The Tempest or A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was an instant success. The Calcutta edition was followed by two London editions within the space of three years.
    Jones was, however, wrong about one thing. Kalidasa was known to have lived in the age of a king called Vikramaditya, but Jones’s dating of ‘above 2000 years old’ was a few centuries out. Vikramadityawas the tide of several Indian sovereigns, and Kalidasa’s patron reigned about AD 400. He was thus a contemporary of St Augustine, not Homer.
    As the literary evidence of a great classical age in Indian history accumulated, the question of dates became more and more vexed. Sanskrit literature included some long lists of kings, but no chronicles – and nothing that could be regarded as historicalwriting. This was a bitter disappointment. Where was the Indian Tacitus? And, without him, how could this civilization be fitted into any kind of historical context? Jones heard tell of the Rajatarangini, a Kashmiri work of the twelfth century which we now know to be the only historical work relating to pre-Islamic India. But in time and place it is far removed from the classical age, and anyway,Jones was not able to get a copy.
    Failing that, there was just one date in the whole of ancient Indian history – 326 BC which, as every schoolboy was expected to know, was the year that Alexander the Great had invaded the Punjab. Strangely, this event, so significant to western historians, seemed to have entirely escaped the attention of Sanskrit authors. Nowhere did Jones find any mention ofGreeks or any sign of Greek influence.
    Through the early 1790s he continued to broaden the scope of his Sanskrit reading. He had already discovered that chess and algebra were of Indian origin; to these, after studying a Sanskrit treatise on music, he added the heptatonic scale. He was also making progress with his legal code and creating something of a reputation in the courts. ‘I can now readboth Sanskrit and Arabic with so much ease that the native lawyers can never impose upon the courts in which I sit.’ To the acclaim of scholars all over the world (Dr Johnson called him ‘one of the most enlightened of the sons of men’) was added the sincere regard and affection of Bengalis, whether petitioners or pandits.
    India was exercising its spell on him. His planned stay of six years wasup; but he no longer yearned to return to England. He might make a visit to Europe, but he planned to be still in India at the turn of the century. Hinduism he found increasingly attractive and the doctrine of reincarnation seemed ‘incomparably more rational, more pious and more likely to deter men from vice than the horrid opinions inculcated by Christians of punishment without end’. But he wasnot tempted to forsake Christianity. Indeed