ir grammatical forms, of
their inflections from composition,--a task which had never been
attempted. By a historical analysis of those forms, as applied to the
verb, he furnished the first trustworthy materials for a history of the
languages compared.

After a brief sojourn in Germany, Bopp came to London, where he made the
acquaintance of Sir Charles Wilkins and H.T. Colebrooke, and became the
friend of Wilhelm von Humboldt, then Prussian ambassador at the court of
St James's, to whom he gave instruction in Sanskrit. He brought out, in
the _Annals of Oriental Literature_ (London, 1820), an essay entitled,
"Analytical Comparison of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Teutonic
Languages," in which he extended to all parts of the grammar what he had
done in his first book for the verb alone. He had previously published a
critical edition, with a Latin translation and notes, of the story of
_Nala and Damayanti_ (London, 1819), the most beautiful episode of the
Mahabharata. Other episodes of the Mahabharata--_Indralokagamanam_,
and three others (Berlin, 1824); _Diluvium_, and three others (Berlin,
1829); and a new edition of _Nala_ (Berlin, 1832)--followed in due
course, all of which, with A.W. Schlegel's edition of the _Bhagavadgita_
(1823), proved excellent aids in initiating the early student into the
reading of Sanskrit texts. On the publication, in Calcutta, of the whole
Mahabharata, Bopp discontinued editing Sanskrit texts, and confined
himself thenceforth exclusively to grammatical investigations.

After a short residence at Gottingen, Bopp was, on the recommendation of
Humboldt, appointed to the chair of Sanskrit and comparative grammar at
Berlin in 1821, and was elected member of the Royal Prussian Academy in
the following year. He brought out, in 1827, his _Ausfuhrliches
Lehrgebaude der Sanskrita-Sprache_, on which he had been engaged since
1821. A new edition, in Latin, was commenced in the following year, and
completed in 1832; and a shorter grammar appeared in 1834. At the same
time he compiled a Sanskrit and Latin glossary (1830) in which, more
especially in the second and third editions (1847 and 1867), account was
also taken of the cognate languages. His chief activity, however,
centred on the elaboration of his _Comparative Grammar_, which appeared
in six parts at considerable intervals (Berlin, 1833, 1835, 1842, 1847,
1849, 1852), under the title _Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit,
Zend, Griechischen, Latei