Hermann Jacobi

Hermann Georg Jacobi (11 February 1850 – 19 October 1937) was a German Indologist.

Education

Jacobi was born in Köln (Cologne) on 11 February 1850. He was educated in the gymnasium of Cologne and then went to the University of Berlin, where initially he studied mathematics, but later, probably under the influence of Albrecht Weber, switched to Sanskrit and comparative linguistics, which he studied under Weber and Johann Gildemeister.

Jacobi was able to visit London for a year, 1872–1873, where he examined the Indian manuscripts available there. The next year, with Georg Buehler, he visited Rajasthan, India, where manuscripts were being collected. At Jaisalmer Library, he came across Jain manuscripts, which were of abiding interest to him for the rest of his life. He later edited and translated many of them, both into German and English, including those for Max Mueller's Sacred Books of the East.

Academic appointments In 1875 he completed his habilitation and became a docent in Sanskrit at Bonn; from 1876-85 he was professor extraordinarius of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Münster, Westphalia; in 1885, he was appointed professor ordinarius of Sanskrit at Kiel; and in 1889 was appointed professor of Sanskrit at Bonn.

Publications (selection)

Zwei Jainastotras (1876) Jaina Sutras, Part I (1884) (Ākārāṅga Sūtra and Kalpa Sūtra) Jaina Sutras, Part II (1895) (Uttarādhyayana and Sūtrakritāṅga) Ausgewählte Erzählungen in Maharashtri (i.e. Selected tales of the Maharashtri), Hirzel (1886) The Computation of Hindu Dates in the Inscriptions, Epigraphia Indica, 1 (1892), 403-460 Das Ramayana, Geschichte und Inhalt nebst Concordanz nach den gedruckten Rezensionen, Verlag Friedrich Cohen (1893) Compositum und Nebensatz, Studien über die indogermanische Sprachentwicklung, Verlag Friedrich Cohen (1897) Mahābhārata: Inhaltsangabe, Index und Concordanz der Calcuttaer und Bombayer Ausgaben, Verlag Friedrich Cohen (1903) On the Antiquity of Vedic Culture (1908) Schriften zur indischen Poetik und Ästhetik (i.e. Writings on Indian poetics and aesthetics), Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (1969) Die Entwicklung der Gottesidee bei den Indern und deren Beweise für das Dasein Gottes (i.e. The development of the Indians' idea of God and their proofs for God's existence), Kurt Schroeder Verlag (1923) Über das ursprüngliche Yogasystem (i.e. About the original system of Yoga, 1929 / 1930)