Comparisons among ancient words needed stronger grounds than the ingenuity of an interpreter. Sir William Jones (1746–1794) found such grounds in the relationship of Sanskrit to Greek and Latin. Addressing the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786, he drew attention to affinities too extensive to be explained as accidental likenesses. The languages appeared to have descended from a common source, even though that source was no longer available to be read.
The proposal gave the study of the past a powerful means of recovering connections that surviving histories did not describe. It also depended on access to Sanskrit learning, whose custodians had long studied the language for purposes of their own. India supplied more than confirming examples for European speculation. It offered a substantial learned tradition that changed what comparison could accomplish.
Jones placed his linguistic work within a broader inquiry shaped by Genesis. He wanted to explain the relationships among peoples and religious traditions after the Flood, and the existence of a shared linguistic ancestry seemed compatible with that undertaking. But compatibility was not proof. A common source for languages did not identify every ancestor, establish a particular migration, or show that similar gods were memories of one patriarch.
The religious history remained more conjectural than the linguistic relationship. Jones could improve the evidence for one part of ancient history while expecting it to support conclusions that required further demonstration. The comparisons he helped establish could also be developed in directions he had not intended. Better knowledge of languages enlarged the ancient world and gave later scholars new reasons to question the chronology in which he had placed it.