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Monier-williams




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Sir Monier Monier-Williams ( 18191899 ) studied, documented and taught Asian languages in England , and compiled one of the most widely-used Sanskrit -English dictionaries.

Monier-Williams was the son of Colonel Monier Williams, surveyor-general in the Bombay presidency, and was born at Bombay on 12 November 1819 . He was educated at University College, Oxford from 1837 and taught Asian languages at the East India Company College from 1844 until 1858 , when Company Rule In India ended after the Mutiny .

Monier-Williams was the second occupant of the Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University , following Horace Hayman Wilson , who had started the University's collection of Sanskrit manuscripts upon taking the Chair in 1831 . Indian studies in England were dominated by the demands of Government and Christian Evangelism , in ways that might be considered unacceptable in an academic environment today. Indeed, Max Müller , the most obvious candidate for the chair, was passed over because his religious views were deemed too liberal. Monier-Williams declared from the outset that the conversion of India to the Christian religion should be one of the aims of Orientalist scholarship.

When Monier-Williams founded the University's Indian Institute in 1883 , it provided both an academic focus and also a training ground for the Indian Civil Service. The Institute closed on India n independence in 1947 .

Monier-Williams created a Sanskrit-English dictionary that is still in print. It is also now available on CD-ROM and as the basis of the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon.

He was knighted in 1886 , and was made KCIE in 1889 , when he adopted his Christian name of Monier as an additional surname. He died at Cannes on 11 April 1899 .


PUBLICATIONS

  • Translation of '' Shakuntala '' (1853).

  • ''Indian Wisdom'', an anthology from Sanskrit literature (1875).

  • ''Modern India and Indians''.

  • ''Buddhism,'' in its connexion with Brahmanism and Hinduism, and in its contrast with Christianity (1889).

  • ''Sanskrit-English Dictionary'', ISBN 0-19-864308-X.


:Incomplete list.


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