William Dwight Whitney

An ancient and authoritative record of the Iranian religion, the Avesta, had recently been discovered. The author’s goal is to trace out the history of the introduction to modern knowledge of the writings of this text.

Professor Lepsius’ goal in this article is to analyze the comments made in the article William Whitney wrote on his “Standard Alphabet” in 1861.

Professor Lepsiuis’ created the standard alphabet for reducing unwritten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in European letters. The validity and strength of this alphabet is tested by Whitney and the American Oriental Society.

William Dwight Whitney reviews the work of Bruno Liebich and R. Otto Franke, two scholars whose work was foundational to the codification of Sanskrit grammar and literature.

William Whitney reviews the Vedic syntax of Delbruck, the founder of the study of comparative linguistcs.

William Dwight Whitney examines Bahtlingk's edition of the two longest of the ancient or genuine Hindu Upanishads, the Chandogya and the Brhad-Aranyaka.

William Dwight Whitney examines various translation of the Upanishads, the sacred Vedic literature of India.

The Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia, edited by William Dwight Whitney and Benjamin E. Smith, comprises twelve volumes, including over 500,000 defined terms, and two volumes of concise encyclopedic entries. The Century Dictionary contains full, accurate, and clear definitions, and its many supporting quotations are chosen to illustrate, where helpful, the typical uses of a word or its specific sense. Whitney, who is still regarded as the greatest American linguist of his time, gathered together a remarkable staff of general and specialist editors, that included many luminaries of American scholarship, to compile this beautiful dictionary.