Life
Having been born and raised in Augsburg, where his father Konrad Roth (died 1637) worked as Doctor utriusque iuris for the Prince-Bishopric, from 1635 to 1639 Heinrich Roth studied Rhetoric at the University of Dillingen and Philosophy at the Jesuit college in Innsbruck. In 1639, he became a Jesuit in Landsberg, and from 1641 to 1645 taught at the University of Munich, before returning to Dillingen to start theological studies, which he completed in Ingolstadt in 1649. The same year, he was ordained priest in Eichstätt.
On behalf of Francesco Piccolomini, in 1649 Roth was assigned to the so-called Ethiopian mission to India. Traveling by the land route via Smyrna (1650) and Isfahan, he arrived in Goa by 1652. He worked first on the Island of Salsette off Goa, where from time to time he acted as Portuguese interpreter. He was then sent on an embassy by one of the native princes, and via Uttarakhand finally reached the Mughal Empire and its residence in Agra in 1654. Acting as rector of the Jesuit residence in Agra since 1659, he was involved in the persecution under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb.
Next to learning the Persian, Kannada and Hindustani languages, Roth at Agra for several years also acquired a profound knowledge of classical Sanskrit grammar and literature from local pandits. The French explorer and philosopher Francois Bernier, who got acquainted with Roth in these years, got to appreciate him as one versed in expert knowledge of the culture and philosophy of religions in India
In 1662, joined by fellow Jesuit Johann Grueber, who was on his way back from China, Roth revisited Europe by the land route via Kabul, and arrived in Rome in February 1664. Athanasius Kircher, in his monumental work China illustrata, published their itinerary, Roth’s description of the Sanskrit alphabet, and some short excerpts of Roth’s other works. Traveling north to Germany, Roth held some public lectures in Neuburg on the history and culture of the Mughal Empire, excerpts of which subsequently appeared in print. In Vienna, Roth succeeded in gaining financial support from emperor Leopold I to have his Sanskrit grammar – the first such work ever compiled by a European, which Roth had completed in Agra by 1660 – appear in print, but the project was stopped by the Jesuit Superior General Giovanni Paolo Oliva.
Ordered by Oliva to set up a Jesuit mission in Nepal, Roth traveled back via Constantinople and Surat, returning to Agra by 1666, where he died in 1668 before he could embark on the Nepalese mission. His gravesite is still visible at the Padri Santos chapel in Lashkarpur, a suburb of Agra.
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