https://indianpedia.org/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Filippo_SassettiFilippo Sassetti - Revision history2026-07-31T03:09:18ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.45.4https://indianpedia.org/index.php?title=Filippo_Sassetti&diff=171250&oldid=previmported>Rathfelder at 15:51, 28 December 20202020-12-28T15:51:20Z<p></p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>{{Infobox person<br />
| name = Filippo Sassetti<br />
| birth_date = 1540<br />
| birth_place = [[Florence]], [[Italy]]<br />
| death_date = 1588<br />
| death_place = [[Goa]], [[India]]<br />
| occupation = [[Travel|Traveller]], [[merchant]] and [[linguist]]<br />
}}<br />
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'''Filippo Sassetti''' (1540–1588) was a traveller and merchant from a long-established [[Florence|Florentine]] mercantile family, who was born in Florence in 1540. Though his father had sold family interests and he had to commence as a clerk in a merchant business, Sassetti enrolled in 1568 at the [[University of Pisa]] and was imbued with a [[Renaissance humanism|humanist]] education; he was proficient in botany, geography, astronomy and cosmography and was curious about philology and the classical languages.<br />
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Settling in [[Lisbon]] in 1578-82, he travelled to the [[Indian subcontinent]], reaching [[Cochin]] in November 1583, and remained in Cochin and [[Goa]] and the [[Malabar coast]] that joins the two, until his death. He is known to posterity from the thirty-two detailed letters<ref>A complete edition of his surviving correspondence from India and within Europe is edited by V. Bramanti, ''Lettere da vari paesi'', 1970.</ref> he sent home to members of the Florentine patriciate and the [[Grand Duke of Tuscany]]; they were not published until centuries after his death. Sassetti, an attentive observer of people and customs, was among the first European observers to study the ancient Indian language, [[Sanskrit]]. Writing privately to fellow Florentine Bernardo Davanzati in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and [[Italian language|Italian]] (e.g. ''deva/dio'' 'God', ''sarpa/serpe'' 'snake', ''sapta/sette'' 'seven', ''ashta/otto'' 'eight', ''nava/nove'' 'nine').<ref>Nunziatella Alessandrini, "Images of India through the eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine Humanist merchant in the 16th century", Mary N. Harris, ed., ''Sights and Insights: Interactive images of Europe and the wider world''</ref> This unpublished observation is today credited to have foreshadowed the later discovery of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] language family. Sassetti died in [[Goa]], [[India]] in 1588.<br />
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==References==<br />
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==Bibliography==<br />
*Marcucci, E. M. 1855. Lettere edite e inedite di Pilippo Sassetti raccolte e annotate. Firenze. <br />
*Muller, Jean-Claude. 1986. Early stages of language comparison from Sassetti to Sir William Jones (1786). Kratylos 31.1-31.<br />
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==External links==<br />
* {{commons category-inline}}<br />
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[[Category:1540 births]]<br />
[[Category:1588 deaths]]<br />
[[Category:Businesspeople from Florence]]<br />
[[Category:Linguists from Italy]]<br />
[[Category:Indo-European studies]]<br />
[[Category:Italian emigrants to India]]<br />
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