The Bohemian scholar Joseph Dobrowsky (1753-1829) played a key role in the Czech national revival of the nineteenth century. Born in Hungary, he went to a German school there and also acquired the Czech language. At Prague, he studied philosophy and theology. In the 1780s, Dobrowsky pursued philological interests and helped to establish the Royal Czech Society of Sciences. His linguistic research encompasses work on literary terms, orthography and historically comparative aspects of the Slavic languages. Reissued here is the revised and expanded 1818 edition of a work first published in 1792. In black-letter German, it deals with the origins and development of the Czech language, locating it within the Slavic language family. Dobrowsky also provides a full list of the most important Bohemian theological and literary writings from the sixth to the sixteenth century.