A Grammar of the Persian Language

The Persian language is rich, melodious and elegant; it has been spoken for ages by the greatest princes in the political courts of Asia and a number of admirable works have been written in it by historians, philosophers and poets. In spite of it, the study of this language was hardly cultivated in the West. They were mostly relegated to library shelves with scholars convinced that there could be nothing valuable in them. Some detested Persian as they did not understand it, another reason was the scarcity of books. William Jones first gives a history of the Persian language from the time of Xenophon till his time and added copious praxis of tales from classical writers of Persian. The author first acquaints the readers with the common terms of grammar and the letters of the alphabet before going into the grammar. This sixth edition of the Grammar of the Persian Language, published in 1828, was carefully revised by the editor Rev. Samuel Lee, Prof of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. About the Author Sir William Jones (1746-94) was an Anglo-Indian philologist, barrister, and a scholar of Ancient India. In 1784 he founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta and started studying the Vedas. He went on to write on local laws, music, and geography and botany, and made the first English translations of several important works of Indian literature.