Jones was a keen student of languages, including Arabic and Persian. He was also a lawyer who, in 1783, began sitting as a judge of the newly-established Supreme Court in Bengal. He was required by the law that established the court to apply local Muslim and Hindu law, rather than English law, with respect to inheritance, caste, marriage, and religious matters, as far as Indian inhabitants of the city of Calcutta (Kolkata) were concerned. And so, he took up the study of Sanskrit in 1785 in order to better understand the law. In keeping with the fashion of the time to organise and classify information and objects, Jones became convinced that Sanskrit was related to Latin and Greek and that there was a common ancestor. Jones was an early proponent of the theory that there had once been an ‘Aryan’ people who spoke an ‘Aryan’ language which was the foundation of Sanskrit and the so-called Indo-European language family. In fact, Jones had little serious evidence for this, though that did not stop others from spinning the idea into a Germanic super-race fantasy propounded by Adolf Hitler, among others.

The monument depicts Jones leaning on a volume bearing Sanskrit lettering. This is the Manusmriti, the text which Jones used to determine ‘Hindu law’. In devoting so much time to the study of Sanskrit and Hindu law as taught to him by high-caste Hindus, he obtained a very particular view of what Hindu law was. How good his understanding was of what he was taught, or how accurate it was, is questionable, but the patriarchal nature of the Manusmriti and the Hindu caste system on which its rules are based suited the patriarchal and class-conscious British very well.

Interestingly, the monument has several allusions to Hinduism, including the roundel at its foot depicting the combined trinity of Hindu gods, but there is no reference to the many other religions of India.

For detailed information about this monument, visit the Pantheons: Sculpture at St Paul's Cathedral website.