Friedrich Max Müller is regarded a great scholar of Sanskrit. Indeed he is revered among scholars in Indology. But if one traces his scholarship and life one cannot help but wonder what made him such an exalted scholar? A brief history of his will tell you he came from a humble background in Germany, raised by his mother who put him in school hoping for better future of her son. He trained in Europe in various oriental languages, sources of this training were often dubious, ones who never set foot in the lands of languages they claimed to be experts in. In fact none of the scholars had ever been to India or had any training in Sanskrit, a language that was no longer spoken in India and was mostly limited to Bramhan scholars. They worked off poor, half baked hand written copies brought to Europe by colonizing Englishmen, attempted to create a dictionary on their own and set to translate these hand copied Sanskrit texts.
The extent of Max Muller's Sanskrit scholarship is betrayed in his own words in this passage from his "Auld Lang Syne" -
So this "scholar of Sanskrit" could not follow Sanskrit when a native Indian came to him speaking in the language.
