Welsh Journals

A Cymmrodor claims kin in Calcutta: an assessment of Sir William Jones as philologer, polymath, and pluralist by Garland Cannon and Michael J. Franklin* It was a custom among the Ancient Britons (and still retained in Anglesey) for the most knowing among them in the descent of families, to send their friends of the same stock or family, a dydd calan Ionawr a calennig, [New Year's gift] a present of their pedigree; [.] [T]he very thought of those brave people, who struggled so long with a superior power for their liberty, inspires me with such an idea of them, that I almost adore their memories. I This genealogical present, of inherent interest to all the 'earliest natives' [Cymmrodorion] of Wales and beyond, was sent in a letter of New Year's Day 1748 by the 'learned British antiquary' and co-founder of this society, Lewis Morris (1701-65) to his friend William ap Sion Siors (son of John George), known in London as William Jones, FRS (c.1675-1749), 'Longitude Jones', celebrated mathematician, disseminator of Newtonian theory, and father of the future Orientalist.2 This document, now sadly lost, showed that the Morrises and the Joneses were closely related, sharing an ancestry deriving from Hwfa ap Cynddelw and the princes of Gwynedd. Exactly why a seemingly insignificant Ynys Mon parish should produce within two generations a scholar of the calibre of William Jones sen. and polymaths of such importance as Lewis Morris and Sir William Jones remains something of a mystery.3 This new study of Jones the linguist and literary The authors would like to express their gratitude to Professor Hal W. Hall of the Cushing Library at Texas A&M University whose technical expertise facilitated their collaboration. 1 The Works of Sir William Jones, ed. Anna Maria Jones, 13 vols. (London, 1807), rpt. in Collected Works, ed. Garland Cannon (Richmond, Surrey and New York, 1993), 1: 2-3; henceforth Works. Like the Morrises, William Jones sen. must have loved Welsh antiquities, for he purchased Moses Williams's library, and employed the first President of the Cymmrodorion, Richard Morris, to catalogue it. Sadly on his early death these precious man- uscripts were bequeathed to his former pupil, the Earl of Macclesfield, and they gathered dust at Shirburn Castle, inaccessible to Welsh scholars. 2 Garland Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones (Cambridge, 1990), 1-4. 3 Perhaps it was something in the enlightening air, or in the milk of 'Mam Cymru', as Anglesey was traditionally known; the secret of their 'common source' might lie in the soil and in the sig- nificant appellation of their village: Llanfihangel Tre'r Beirdd (The Parish of St Michael, Town of the Bards). The district is rich in associations with both the Druids and the British saints, see