material for the Atharva-Veda. In 1878 he went to Europe with his wife and daughters, to write out his Sanskrit Grammar and carry it through the press, and spent there fifteen months, chiefly at Berlin and Gotha.
Of Whitney's scientific writings, the most important ones[1] (since they are scattered among many other bibliographical items: pages lvi to lxi) may here be briefly enumerated in several groups of related works.—1. The edition of the Atharva-Veda; the Alphabetisches Verzeichniss der Versanfänge der Atharva-Saṁhitā; the Atharva-Veda Prātiçākhya; the Index Verborum; to which must now be added the two present volumes of critical commentary and translation. In the same general category belongs his Tāittirīya Prātiçākhya. As a part of the fruit of his Sanskrit studies must be mentioned also the Sūrya-Siddhānta; and, finally, his Sanskrit Grammar, with its Supplement, The Roots, Verb-forms, and Primary Derivatives of the Sanskrit Language.—2. His chief contributions to general linguistics are comprised in his Language and the Study of Language and in the two series of Oriental and Linguistic Studies and in his Life and Growth of Language. Here may be mentioned his article on "Language" in Johnson's Cyclopaedia (vol. ii., 1876) and that on "Philology" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (vol. xviii., 1885).—3. His principal text-books are his German Grammars (a larger and a smaller) and Reader and Dictionary, his Essentials of English Grammar, and his French Grammar. Important as an influence upon the conservation and growth of the English language is his part in the making of The Century Dictionary (see p. xxxviii).
Of Whitney's minor writings, those which he included in the Yale Bibliographies (p. lvi, below) extending to 1892, with a few others, are enumerated in the List below. A much fuller list, comprising 360 numbers, was published in the Memorial Volume, pages 121-150. One reason for putting some of the lesser papers into the last-mentioned list was to show the versatility of Mr. Whitney's mind and the wide range of his interests.
Mr. Whitney's services to science were recognized by scholars and learned corporations. Thus he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Breslau in 1861; that of Doctor of Laws from Williams College in 1868, from the College of William and Mary (Virginia) in 1869, from the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) in 1874, from Harvard in 1876, and from the University of Edinburgh in 1889. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia) and of the National Academy of Sciences (Washington). He was an honorary member of the Oriental or Asiatic societies of Great
- ↑ Some estimate of their general significance is given below, pages li to liii.
