Раковски като индоевропеист
Rakovski as a scholar of Indo-European

Summary/Abstract: The article examines Rakovski’s expertise in Indo-European studies and etymology on the basis of two of his writings – Antiquity of Bulgarian language largely proven and compared with Sanskrit and The advantages of Bulgarian over the Greek language. After a brief presentation of his Hindistan theory the author analyzes Rakovski’s critical remarks to three renowned Indo-European scholars of that period – Eugène Burnouf, Friedrich Max Müller, and Frédéric Gustave Eichhoff. After that the expose focuses on the 60 etymologies proposed by Rakovski in support of his theory of the primeval origin of the Bulgarian language. It turns out that more than a third of them are correct, due to Rakovski’s considerable training in Greek and other languages, while the wrong ones are the result of both his ignorance of Indo-European sound laws and his ideological bias.

• Details
• Contents