Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern
Encyclopedia
Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern (April 6, 1833–July 4, 1917) was a Dutch
linguist
and Orientalist. In the literature, he is usually referred to as H. Kern or Hendrik Kern; a few other scholars bear the same surname.
, but when he was six his family repatriated to the Netherlands. When he entered grammar school, he added the extra-curricular subjects of English and Italian to his studies.
In 1850 he went up to Utrecht University
to study Letters, but in 1851 moved to Leiden University
to avail himself of the opportunity to read Sanskrit
with Professor A. Rutgers. After obtaining his Doctor's Degree in 1855, he moved to Berlin
, where he continued his Sanskrit studies as a pupil of Albrecht Weber
, and also took up Germanic and Slavonic languages.
On his return to the Netherlands in 1858, Dr Kern accepted a post as a lecturer of Greek at Maastricht
. In 1863 he was offered a Professorship in Benares, India
where he taught Sanskrit at Brahmana and Queen's Colleges until 1865, when he was offered the Chair of Sanskrit at Leiden University
. He remained there until his retirement in 1903, when he moved to the city of Utrecht.
Professor Kern continued work after his retirement, but when in 1916 his wife died, he was heart-broken and out-lived her by less than a year.
, Kern is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Oriental Studies in the Netherlands. His interest in languages was great, as witness his decision to take up English and Italian while still a secondary school pupil. In addition, he displayed an extraordinary ability to study, and to master, a wide variety of languages.
At first, his studies were restricted (if "restricted" is indeed the correct word) to Indo-European languages, ranging from the Germanic sub-group to Sanskrit. His thesis, entitled Specimen historicum exhibens scriptores Graecos de rebus Persicis Achaemenidarum monumentis collatos (1855) broadened the field to Persian
, showing that inscriptions in that language could now be used to extend our knowledge of Ancient Persia. While in Benares, he applied himself to the study of Dravidian languages
as well as picking up some Arabic and Hebrew
, but also learnt sufficient Hungarian
to be able to read novels in that non-Indo-European language within a year. His studies also included the Malay languages.
In 1874, he published an edition of the astronomer Āryabhata
's work, thus putting out the first publication in nagara
script in the Netherlands.
Apart from promoting the study of Sanskrit, Professor Kern laid the foundation for Austronesian
studies by Dutch scholars. It is as a comparativist and a philologist that he gained his great reputation. In 1879 he worked on Cambodian
inscriptions, then turned his attention to Kawi
(or Old-Javanese) and in 1886 showed that Fijian
and Polynesian
were cognate languages. He was the first scholar to propose that the Oceanic languages constituted a sub-group of Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian, as the language family was then called), and in 1906 he published a study of Aneityum
and Erromanga, two languages in the Vanuatu
branch of the Oceanic sub-group.
His interests were not restricted to pure linguistics. Thus, in 1889 he made use of the "Wörter und Sachen" method (which compares designations for plants, animals and objects in cognate languages) to ascertain a putative dispersal centre for the "Malayo-Polynesian" peoples.
Kern's versatility also showed itself in his cultural studies. His History of Buddhism in India (1881-83), displays a thorough command of its subject. However, the author has been criticised for an incomplete understanding of Eastern astrology and mysticism, which may in part have been due to his positivist approach. Professor Kern has also been said to have borne a deep distrust of his contemporary Neogrammarians.
He published extensively, and his influence on subsequent linguists, both in the Netherlands and elsewhere, has been profound.
, 2 vols., 1881-1883). In English
he wrote a translation of the Saddharma Pundarika (Oxford
, 1884, published as Vol. 21 of Max Müller
's Sacred Books of the East
); and a Manual of Indian Buddhism (Strassburg, 1896) for Buhler Kielhorn's Grundriss der indoarischen Philologie.
(With two exceptions, the following publications are in Dutch. The translation of a title in quotation marks indicates that no English translation of the work has come to notice.)
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and Orientalist. In the literature, he is usually referred to as H. Kern or Hendrik Kern; a few other scholars bear the same surname.
Life
Hendrik Kern was born to Dutch parents in the Central-Javanese town of Purworejo in the Dutch East IndiesDutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Netherlands government in 1800....
, but when he was six his family repatriated to the Netherlands. When he entered grammar school, he added the extra-curricular subjects of English and Italian to his studies.
In 1850 he went up to Utrecht University
Utrecht University
Utrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....
to study Letters, but in 1851 moved to Leiden University
Leiden University
Leiden University , located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close...
to avail himself of the opportunity to read Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
with Professor A. Rutgers. After obtaining his Doctor's Degree in 1855, he moved to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where he continued his Sanskrit studies as a pupil of Albrecht Weber
Albrecht Weber
Albrecht Friedrich Weber was a German Indologist and historian.He was born in Breslau, where his father was a Professor of Political Economy. He studied in that town, Bonn, and in Berlin, 1842-1845, busying himself especially with literature and Sanskrit archaeology. He received a doctor's degree...
, and also took up Germanic and Slavonic languages.
On his return to the Netherlands in 1858, Dr Kern accepted a post as a lecturer of Greek at Maastricht
Maastricht
Maastricht is situated on both sides of the Meuse river in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border and near the German border...
. In 1863 he was offered a Professorship in Benares, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
where he taught Sanskrit at Brahmana and Queen's Colleges until 1865, when he was offered the Chair of Sanskrit at Leiden University
Leiden University
Leiden University , located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close...
. He remained there until his retirement in 1903, when he moved to the city of Utrecht.
Professor Kern continued work after his retirement, but when in 1916 his wife died, he was heart-broken and out-lived her by less than a year.
Work
Together with Herman Neubronner van der TuukHerman Neubronner van der Tuuk
Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk was a Bible translator and linguist specialising in the languages of the Dutch East Indies.-Early years and studies:...
, Kern is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Oriental Studies in the Netherlands. His interest in languages was great, as witness his decision to take up English and Italian while still a secondary school pupil. In addition, he displayed an extraordinary ability to study, and to master, a wide variety of languages.
At first, his studies were restricted (if "restricted" is indeed the correct word) to Indo-European languages, ranging from the Germanic sub-group to Sanskrit. His thesis, entitled Specimen historicum exhibens scriptores Graecos de rebus Persicis Achaemenidarum monumentis collatos (1855) broadened the field to Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, showing that inscriptions in that language could now be used to extend our knowledge of Ancient Persia. While in Benares, he applied himself to the study of Dravidian languages
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
as well as picking up some Arabic and Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, but also learnt sufficient Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
to be able to read novels in that non-Indo-European language within a year. His studies also included the Malay languages.
In 1874, he published an edition of the astronomer Āryabhata
Aryabhata
Aryabhata was the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy...
's work, thus putting out the first publication in nagara
Nagara
Nagara is a village in the Shimoga district of the state of Karnataka, India. It is 17 km from Hosanagara or 84 km from Shimoga. This was called "Bidanoor" earlier during the 16th century, this was the last capital city of Keladi rulers. In 1763, Hyder Ali captured this area...
script in the Netherlands.
Apart from promoting the study of Sanskrit, Professor Kern laid the foundation for Austronesian
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
studies by Dutch scholars. It is as a comparativist and a philologist that he gained his great reputation. In 1879 he worked on Cambodian
Khmer language
Khmer , or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. It is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language , with speakers in the tens of millions. Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious...
inscriptions, then turned his attention to Kawi
Kawi language
Kawi is a literary and prose language on the islands of Java, Bali, and Lombok, based on Old Javanese, a language with a sizable vocabulary of Sanskrit loanwords. Kawi is the ancestor language of modern Javanese. The name "kawi" is derived from the root ku, which in Sanskrit means “poet”, and, in...
(or Old-Javanese) and in 1886 showed that Fijian
Fijian language
Fijian is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken in Fiji. It has 450,000 first-language speakers, which is less than half the population of Fiji, but another 200,000 speak it as a second language...
and Polynesian
Polynesian languages
The Polynesian languages are a language family spoken in the region known as Polynesia. They are classified as part of the Austronesian family, belonging to the Oceanic branch of that family. They fall into two branches: Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian. Polynesians share many cultural traits...
were cognate languages. He was the first scholar to propose that the Oceanic languages constituted a sub-group of Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian, as the language family was then called), and in 1906 he published a study of Aneityum
Aneityum language
Anejom̃ or Aneityum is an Oceanic language spoken by 600 people on Aneityum Island, Vanuatu.-External links:*...
and Erromanga, two languages in the Vanuatu
Vanuatu
Vanuatu , officially the Republic of Vanuatu , is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and southeast of the Solomon Islands, near New Guinea.Vanuatu was...
branch of the Oceanic sub-group.
His interests were not restricted to pure linguistics. Thus, in 1889 he made use of the "Wörter und Sachen" method (which compares designations for plants, animals and objects in cognate languages) to ascertain a putative dispersal centre for the "Malayo-Polynesian" peoples.
Kern's versatility also showed itself in his cultural studies. His History of Buddhism in India (1881-83), displays a thorough command of its subject. However, the author has been criticised for an incomplete understanding of Eastern astrology and mysticism, which may in part have been due to his positivist approach. Professor Kern has also been said to have borne a deep distrust of his contemporary Neogrammarians.
He published extensively, and his influence on subsequent linguists, both in the Netherlands and elsewhere, has been profound.
Select bibliography
Kern's chief work is considered to be Geschiedenis van het Buddhisme in Indië (HaarlemHaarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
, 2 vols., 1881-1883). In English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
he wrote a translation of the Saddharma Pundarika (Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, 1884, published as Vol. 21 of Max Müller
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...
's Sacred Books of the East
Sacred Books of the East
The Sacred Books of the East is a monumental 50-volume set of English translations of Asian religious writings, edited by Max Müller and published by the Oxford University Press between 1879 and 1910...
); and a Manual of Indian Buddhism (Strassburg, 1896) for Buhler Kielhorn's Grundriss der indoarischen Philologie.
(With two exceptions, the following publications are in Dutch. The translation of a title in quotation marks indicates that no English translation of the work has come to notice.)
- Handleiding bij het onderwijs der Nederlandse taal
- two vols, Zutphen, 1859-60, numerous reprints.
- Korte Nederlandse Spraakkunst
- HaarlemHaarlemHaarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
, 1872.- Over de schrijfwijze van eenige zamenst. in het Nederlands
- UtrechtUtrecht (city)Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...
, 1858.- Çakuntalā of het herkenningsteeken, Ind. tnsp. van Kālidāsa
- Haarlem, 1862.
- Over het aandeel van Indië en de geschiedenis van de Beschaving, en den invloed der studie van het Sankrit op de taalwetenschap
- Leiden, 1865.
- Die Glossen in der Lex Salica und die Sprache der Salischen Franken
- The HagueThe HagueThe Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
, 1869.- Over de jaartelling der Zdl. Buddhisten
- a publication of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van WetenschappenRoyal Netherlands Academy of Arts and SciencesThe Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands...
(Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), 1874.- Wŗttasançaya, Oud-Javaans leerdicht over versbouw, tekst en vert.
- Leiden, 1875.
- Eene Indische sage in Javaansch gewaad|Javanese]] Guise")
- a publication of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), 1876.
- Over de oudjavaanse vertaling van 't Mahābhārata
- a publication of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), 1877.
- Geschiedenis van het Buddhisme in Indië
- two vols, Haarlem, 1881–83. [Considered to be Kern's chief work.]
- Over den invloed der Indische, Arabische en Europese beschaving op de volken van den Indische Archipel
- Leiden, 1883.
- Saddharma-Pundarîka, or, the Lotus of the True Law
- OxfordOxfordThe city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, 1884.- Verklaring van eenige woorden in Pali-geschriften
- a publication of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), 1886.
- De Fidji-taal vergeleken met hare verwanten in Indonesië en Polynesië
- AmsterdamAmsterdamAmsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, 1886.- Tekstuitgave van het Oud-Javaanse heldendicht Rāmāyana
- The Hague, 1900.
- De legende van Kunjarakarna
- Amsterdam, 1901.
- Taalvergelijkende verhandeling over het Aneityumsch, met een Aanhangsel over het Klankstelsel van het Eromanga [sic]
- Amsterdam, 1906.
- Numerous contributions to Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en VolkenkundeKITLVThe Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies at Leiden was founded in 1851. Its objective is the advancement of the study of the anthropology, linguistics, social sciences, and history of Southeast Asia, the Pacific Area, and the Caribbean. Special emphasis is laid on...
and other learned journals.
- Numerous contributions to Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde