[235] Herder, Briefe zur Befoerderung der Humanitaet, x, ed.  Suphan, vol. 18, p. 259; Deguignes, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 172; Francis Gladwin, The Persian Moonshee, Calcutta, 1801, Pers. and Engl. pt. ii. p. 3.

[236] See Hammer, Fundgruben, vol. i. pp. 7, 8.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.

Now that we have come to the end of our investigation, it may be well to survey briefly the whole field and to summarize the results we have reached.

We have seen that to mediaeval Europe India and Persia were lands of magic and enchantment; their languages and literatures were utterly unknown.  Whatever influence these literatures exerted on that of Europe was indirect and not recognized.  Nor did the Portuguese discoveries effect an immediate change.  It was only by slow degrees that the West obtained any knowledge of Eastern thought.  The Gulistan and Bustan of Sa’di, some maxims of Bhartrhari and a few scattered fragments were all that was known in Europe of Indic or Persian literature before the end of the eighteenth century.

Then the epoch-making discoveries of Sir William Jones aroused the attention of the Western world and laid the foundations of a new science.  New ideas of world-wide significance presented themselves to the European mind.  Nowhere were these ideas welcomed with more enthusiasm than in Germany, the home of philological scholarship.  Herder pointed the way, and by means of translations and imitations tried to introduce the treasures of Oriental thought into German literature.  That he did not meet with unqualified success was due, as we have seen, to his one-sided didactic tendency.  To him, however, belongs the credit of the first impulse.  Then Friedrich Schlegel founded the study of Sanskrit in Germany, while at the same time Hammer was busily at work spreading a knowledge of the Persian poets in Europe.  The effect of the latter’s work was instantaneous, for, as has been pointed out, it was his translation of Hafid that inspired the composition of Goethe’s Divan and thus started the Oriental movement in Germany.

We have examined the share which Rueckert, Platen, Bodenstedt and Schack had in this movement and have touched briefly on the work of some of the minor lights.  It will be noticed that the Persian tendency found a far greater number of followers than the Indic.  And this is but natural.  It was far more easy to sing of wine, woman and roses in the manner of Hafid, such as most of these poets conceived this manner to be, than to assimilate and reproduce the philosophic and often involved poetry of India.  Add to this the charming form and the rich rhyme of Persian poetry and we can readily understand why it won favor.  But we can also understand readily enough why most of the so-called Hafizian singing is of very inferior quality.  Those men who did the most serious work for the West-Eastern movement in Germany, men like Rueckert and Schack, were not one-sided in their studies.  It was their earnest intention to offer to their countrymen what was best in the literatures of both India and Persia, and that they have carried out this intention nobly no one who has followed this investigation will be disposed to deny.