Jones established the Indo-European language family in 1786

Evidence

In 1786 Jones was the first to make the link between Sanskrit and Greek and Latin and declare that the three languages must have descended from a common ancestor. The establishment of an Indo-Aryan family of languages by European philologists is something that has been resented by Edward Said and he appears to doubt the validity of their findings, though he does not explain why. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 219

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how scholarly claims get politically contested, echoing the Said critique threaded through this whole book.