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Edward Elbridge Salisbury and the AOS Roberta L Dougherty, Yale University

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Edward Elbridge Salisbury and the AOS Roberta L Dougherty, Yale University Yale University From the SelectedWorks of Roberta L. Dougherty Spring March 17, 2017 AOS 2017: Edward Elbridge Salisbury and the AOS Roberta L Dougherty, Yale University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/bintalbalad/23/ [SLIDE] An American Orientalist: Edward Elbridge Salisbury and the AOS AOS members probably know the subject of my paper this afternoon as one of the society’s prominent officers during its first half-century, having served as its Corresponding Secretary (1846-1857), President (twice, in 1863-1866, and again from 1873-1880),1 and, at various times, as member of the Board of Directors, a Vice President, and for his service on the publications committee of the Journal. The members may be less familiar with the fact that his appointment at Yale College as professor of Arabic and Sanskrit language and literature in 1841 was the first such professorship in the Americas--and in fact the first university professorship of any kind in the Americas.2 They may also be unaware of the extent to which Salisbury supported the early establishment of the Society not only with his time, but his means. Part of the AOS lore regarding Salisbury is that he was present at the society’s founding in 1842, but this was not actually the case. Although his name was indeed on the list of members first elected to the society after its founding, he may have remained unaware of his election for over a year. He was with some effort persuaded to serve as its Corresponding Secretary, and with even more difficulty persuaded to become its President. But Salisbury energetically supported both the organization and its journal from its earliest years and in the most minute of its affairs. Salisbury’s money purchased the fonts in Oriental languages that enabled scholarly communication through the JAOS, and subsidized its publication for several decades. He also groomed his most famous student, William Dwight Whitney (eventually president of the AOS), to replace him as AOS librarian and on its publications committee. 1 E. Washburn Hopkins, “Edward Elbridge Salisbury,” in India Old and New, with a Memorial Address (ed. E. Washburn Hopkins, New York: Scribner’s, 1901), p. [2]. 2 Hopkins, “Memorial Address in Honor of Professor Salisbury,” in ibid., p. 6. How did Salisbury come to be so sought after by the Society? [SLIDE] I’ll briefly go back to his early life & development as a student, before returning to the topic of his relationship to the AOS. Salisbury graduated from Yale College in 1832 and, after a year’s hiatus, returned to study theology in its Divinity School. [SLIDE] There he would have come under the influence of two persons. The first of these was Josiah Gibbs,3 with whom Salisbury would have studied theology and Hebrew. In the autobiography he wrote towards the end of his life (published in the JAOS in 1944),4 Salisbury indicated that it was Gibbs’ enthusiasm for the new science of comparative philology that first planted the seed in Salisbury’s mind to pursue the study of Sanskrit and to leave theology behind. However the evidence of Salisbury’s own letters & journals held in the Yale MSSA shows quite clearly that another strong influence would have been Theodore Woolsey, Yale professor of Greek and, eventually, also Salisbury’s brother-in-law. Salisbury would have studied Greek with Woolsey as a Yale undergraduate. Later, when he returned to New Haven as a student in the Divinity School, Salisbury lived for a time with the newlywed Woolseys. Theodore Woolsey was one of the very few Americans who had at that point ventured to France & Germany to study Oriental languages—indeed, Americans had to go abroad to study such subjects. Woolsey was known to have studied Arabic in Paris in the 1820s5 and it would be 3 Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr. (1790-1861), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs_Sr. 4 Franklin Edgerton & E.E. Salisbury, “A Salisbury Letter” (JAOS vol 64, no. 2 (1944), p. 60. 5 Hopkins, “Memorial Address…,” p. 4. letters of introduction from Woolsey that would give Salisbury the necessary entrée to the great European Orientalists later on. [SLIDE] After completing his theological education and reaching his majority, Salisbury came into his inheritance from his wealthy merchant father. He married his cousin Abigail, who had considerable wealth of her own. [SLIDE] In 1836 the two set off to Europe on a three-year honeymoon, --as Salisbury wrote later in his autobiography, “We chose to go abroad for travel and self- improvement … we threw ourselves with all the abandon of inexperience in the ways of the world upon the wide ocean and the wider expanse of a new life in foreign climes.”6—but this was not just a honeymoon; the journey pushed Salisbury towards a new purpose, which in his autobiography he described as “a turning point.”7 During this journey Salisbury & Abby not only partook of the usual delights of the Grand Tour but also diligently applied themselves to the study of German and French. [SLIDE] The acquisition of these languages, plus Woolsey’s letters of introduction, made it possible in 1837-38 for Salisbury to study Arabic, Persian, & Hindustani in Paris with the great scholars Silvestre de Sacy & Garcin de Tassy, [SLIDE] and in the winter of 1838 to begin Sanskrit in Berlin, with Franz Bopp. Salisbury was in constant communication with Woolsey during this three-year period, and even purchased books on Woolsey’s behalf to send back to America before his return. 6 “A Salisbury Letter,” pp. 59-60. 7 Ibid., p. 60. [SLIDE] At the same time, Salisbury was also building up his own personal library of texts, dictionaries, and grammars. His wife Abby wrote to her mother-in-law describing Salisbury’s drive to build his book collection thus: “Edward almost begrudges the time he is obliged to spend in buying books, but is very necessary to be done, for upon this much of his future usefulness depends.”8 Indeed, Salisbury even borrowed $1000 from his mother to buy a collection of Sanskrit books published in India.9 Towards the end of his last year in Europe, EES conceived the notion that his ultimate purpose would be to obtain a post at Yale where he could provide instruction in the languages he had spent much time, energy, and expense to acquire, and he gently hinted this idea in a letter home to his brother-in-law Woolsey.10 In his autobiography he noted that his return to New Haven with this library in 1839 created quite a stir among the local academics, who would never in their lives have seen such a large collection of publications in Oriental languages.11 [SLIDE] The fact that such a collection was now located in New Haven, plus the inarguable fact that Salisbury was now the only American with advanced academic training in Arabic & Sanskrit, set in motion the creation of a professorship of Arabic and Sanskrit at Yale. BIL Woolsey also knew very well that Salisbury, being a man of independent means, did not need to work for a living, and when in 1841 Yale appointed him Professor of Arabic & Sanskrit Language and Literature, it was without pay. 8 Salisbury Family Papers / MS429 / Series III / Box 11 / Folder no. 45a / [18381122] Abigail Phillips Salisbury to her MIL, Abigail Breese Salisbury, from Berlin 9 [NOTE: this is a GREAT DEAL OF MONEY for the time! Poss. $25K!!] 10 CITATION NEEDED 11 “A Salisbury Letter,” p. 60. After his appointment Salisbury felt the need to sort of “top up” his Sanskrit studies, and in May 1842 he headed back to Europe—to Bonn this time—to study with Christian Lassen, George Freytag, and others. [SLIDE] This meant that by the time the famous “few gentlemen interested in Oriental literature” founded the American Oriental Society in Boston in September 1842,12 Salisbury had been away from New Haven for months. He would have been an obvious choice to these “gentlemen” because of the uniqueness & prestige of his position at Yale, and because of the well-known value of his personal library, and his name was listed in the minutes of the AOS Board among those of the very first members elected to membership of the AOS on 7 September 1842.13 This notification was sent to Salisbury by mail, but either he overlooked it after he returned from Europe in the spring of 1843, or he decided—possibly for reasons of modesty—to ignore the notification. [SLIDE] Upon returning from Europe and as a preface to taking up his new teaching duties at Yale, Salisbury delivered an inaugural discourse at Yale College in August 1843. In it, he surveyed for his audience the entire history of Arabic and Sanskrit literature (and the state of the art in their study), concluding his address with these poignant words: You perceive, gentlemen, that my field of study is broad and requires much minuteness of research in order to know it thoroughly. I profess only to have set 12 “Extract from the report of a committee of the American Oriental Society,” in JAOS vol. 1, no. 1 (1843), p. ii. 13 AOS archives, CITATION NEEDED. foot upon it… and to do what may be in my power to attract others into it, though I am aware I must expect to labor, for a time, almost alone…. I shall eagerly seek to add brightness to my flickering lamp from the shining lights about me. The words are poignant in themselves but even more so knowing that in fact a group of people in Boston shared his interests and were even at that moment actively seeking his partnership in developing the field of the study of Oriental languages in America.
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