Otton Bohtlingk

Böhtlingk, Otton Nikolaevich 

Born May 30 (June 11), 1815, in St. Petersburg; died Mar. 19 (Apr. 1), 1904, in Leipzig. German and Russian philologist and Indologist.

Böhtlingk worked for a long time in Russia. He was an academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1855). Böhtlingk’s main work, compiled jointly with R. Roth and assisted by some other Indologists, was the Sanskrit Dictionary, well known as the Great St. Petersburg (vols. 1–7, 1855–75; abridged edition, 1879–89). In the monograph On The Language of the Yakuts (1848–51), BÖhtlingk was the first to apply the comparative historical method to the study of the Turkic languages. He published Panini’s ancient Indian grammar (1839–40). Panini’s methods of describing a linguistic system influenced Böhtlingk’s work.

WORKS

Sanskrit-Wdrterbuch, vols. 1–7. St. Petersburg, 1855–75.
“Über die Sprache der Jakuten.” In A. Th. Middendorf, Reise in den äussersten Norden und Osten Sibiriens wahrend der Jahre 1843 und 1844, vol. 3, parts 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1848–51.
Panini’s Grammatik. Leipzig, 1887.

REFERENCES

Bulich, S. K. “Pamiati O. fon Betlinga.” Izv. Otdeleniia russkogoiazyka i slovesnosti imp. AN, 1904, vol. 9, book 3.
“Böhtlingk’s Druckschriften.”Bull;etin de l’Académie des sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, 1892, new series, vol. 3 (35), no. 1.