MAX MULLER'S MODESTY

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 5229, 19 March 1904, Page 13

MAX MULLER'S MODESTY

Speaking once of languages to Max Muller, a woman of India, herself a. scholar, asked how many he knew. “I hope X know my mother tongue/’ ho replied. “I am acquainted with a tew others.”

‘‘“Why tnis caution laughed the ladf. “I will toll you,” said the great Sanskrit scholar. ‘‘There came to mo one day, as I sat here in my study—the Buddha on my hearth—a man who seemed my ideal of the Sanskrit priesthood. Ho spoke to me in an unknown tongue. I asked him what language ho was speaking. ‘The man huddled himself together on the floor and wept. “‘I have honoured you all my life, said he,_ ‘as the greatest living Sanskrit scholar in all the world. I speak to you n simple Sanskrit salutation, anl you do not understand me.' “Since then,” said Professor Muller, “I never say that I know any language.”

It was merely the difference between the spoken and the written dead tongue that had puzzled him. But that take* nothing irom' the humility of the linguist—a humility as relreshing as it is rare, and scarcely the mark of the ago to which Px-ofessor Muller belonged.