Hermann Jacobi

Hermann Georg Jacobi ( born February 11, 1850 in Cologne, † October 19, 1937 in Bonn ) was a German Indologist, the major contributions to the study of Jainism, the Indian astronomy and philosophy made ​​.

Life and work

Jacobi was the son of Otto Fritz Jacobi from Muhlenberg. He studied mathematics in Berlin for a while, but soon moved on to the subjects Indology and Comparative Linguistics. In 1869 he became a member of the Corps Teutonia Bonn. In his thesis (1872 ) he worked on a theme of Indian astrology. In 1885 he became a professor at the Christian -Albrechts -University of Kiel, 1889 at the University of Bonn, where he became professor emeritus in 1922.

1873-74 Jacobi visited India and traveled with Georg Buehler by Rajasthan where Buehler tracked rare manuscripts. A second trip to India was followed by 1913-14 at the invitation of the University of Calcutta, where he lectured on Indian poetry.

Jacobi were numerous Jain texts out, translated and commented on them. His title " Selected stories in Maharashtri " with grammar and glossary is regarded as trend-setting publication for Prakrit studies. In a study of the dating of the hymns of the Rig Veda, published in a Festschrift for Rudolph von Roth, that went back to astronomical calculations at a time around 4500 BC Later he took up the same theme once and published in 1908 an article about the Age Vedic culture in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, which caused a great deal of controversy.

Indeed, Jacobi was his research contradicts the conventional wisdom of Indology, which states that the Vedas only after the "Aryan immigration " in India ( first half of the second millennium ) were incurred. Jacobi's findings are now relevant again, since he is the only renowned Western Indologist, who advocated a very early dating of the Vedas and hence is in accordance with representatives of today's out-of -India theory, which also in their approaches to part dating back to the 5th millennium.

At a later stage Jacobi yet published a series of studies on the epics, to poetry and aesthetics, Samkhya, Yoga and Buddhism.