Moriz Winternitz (Horn, December 23, 1863 –Prague, January 9, 1937) was a scholar fromAustria who began hisIndology contributions working withMax Müller at the Oxford University.[1][2] An eminent Sanskrit scholar, he worked as a professor inPrague in the German part ofCharles-Ferdinand University after 1902, for nearly thirty years.[2][3] HisGeschichte der indischen Literatur, published 1908–1922, offered a comprehensive literary history of Sanskrit texts.[4] The contributions on a wide range of Sanskrit texts by Winternitz have been an influential resource for modern era studies onHinduism,Buddhism andJainism.[5]
An AustrianOrientalist, he received his earliest education in thegymnasium of his native town, and in 1880 entered theUniversity of Vienna, receiving the degree ofDoctor of Philosophy in 1886. In 1888 he went toOxford, where until 1892 he assisted the preparation of the second edition of theRig-Veda (4 vols., Oxford, 1890–92), collating manuscripts and deciding on the adoption of many new readings. Winternitz remained in Oxford until 1898, acting in various educational capacities, such as German lecturer to theAssociation for Promoting the Higher Education of Women (1891–98), librarian of theIndian Institute at Oxford (1895), and frequently as examiner in German andSanskrit both for the university and for theIndian Civil Service.
In 1899, attending the Oriental Congress in Rome, he proposed the establishment of a society dedicated to studying Sanskrit texts, and particularly noted the need for a new critical edition of the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata.[6] In that same year, he went toCharles-Ferdinand University in Prague asprivatdozent for Indology and generalethnology, and in 1902 was appointed to the professorship of Sanskrit (made vacant by the retirement of Ludwig) and of ethnology. The Winternitz family were friendly withAlbert Einstein, when he was in Prague around 1911.
Rabindranath Tagore visited Prague in 1920 and met Winternitz. On an invitation from the poet, he went toSantiniketan and worked as a visiting professor from February 1923 to September 1924.[7] During this time in India, he continued his advocacy for Mahabharata studies, working with theBhandarkar Oriental Research Institute and advising them in editing their critical editions of the Mahabharata.[6] He additionally published several research papers that studied the Mahabharata, including analyses on versions of the epic common in South India, and studies of the figure of Ganesha in the epic.[6]
Among his students wereVincenc Lesný,Wilhelm Gampert andOtto Stein, who themselves went on to become prominent Indologists.
In addition to valuable contributions on Sanskrit and ethnology to various scientific journals, Winternitz edited theApastambiya Gṛihyasutra (Vienna, 1887) and theMantrapaṭha, or the Prayer-Book of the Apastambins (part i, Oxford, 1897); translated Müller'sAnthropological Religion and hisTheosophy, or Psychological Religion into German (Leipzig, 1894–95); and publishedDas Altindische Hochzeitsrituell (Vienna, 1892), which also contains valuable ethnological material;A Catalogue of South Indian Manuscripts Belonging to theRoyal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1902); andGeschichte der Indischen Literatur (part i, Leipzig, 1905). He also published expansive studies of Indian literature, publishing a two-volume book on the same.[6]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Jacobs, Joseph; Gray, Louis H. (1906)."Moriz Winternitz". InSinger, Isidore; et al. (eds.).The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. XII. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 536.
