Aufrecht, THEODOR

Aufrecht, THEODOR, philologist, born 7th January 1822 at Leschnitz in Upper Silesia. After studying at Berlin under Bopp, Böckh, and Lachmann, he settled there in 1850, and devoted himself to Sanskrit and the old German tongues. To this time of his life also belongs his collaboration with Kirchhoff in the publication of Umbrische Sprachdenkmäler (2 vols. Berlin, 1849-51), an epoch-making work in the comparative study of the languages of ancient Italy; as well as the founding of the well-known Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung (1852), in the editing of which he assisted A. Kuhn for some time. In 1852 he repaired to Oxford, where he helped Max Müller in his edition of the Rigveda, and was appointed to a place in the Bodleian Library, the fruit of which was his excellent Catalogus codicum Sanseritorum bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Oxoniensis (1864). In 1862 he became professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Edinburgh, and in 1875 resigned this chair for one at Bonn. Aufrecht has published scholarly editions of several classical Sanskrit works, most important being his Rigveda, in the Roman character (2d ed. 2 vols. Bonn, 1877).