Monier Monier-Williams
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Sir Monier Monier-Williams (1819-1899) studied, documented and taught Asian languages in England, and compiled one of the most widely-used Sanskrit-English dictionaries.
Monier-Williams was educated at University College, Oxford 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 delared 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 Indian 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.
Publications
- Sanskrit-English Dictionary ISBN 019864308X
- Modern India and Indians
- Not a complete list.
External links
- Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon containing Monier-Williams' Sanskrit-English Dictionary
- Sanskrit-English Dictionary on CD-ROM, Searchable Digital Facsimile Edition Freeware CD
- The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
- Boden Chair of Sanskrit
- Why Is The West Crazy About A ‘Dead’ Language? - Indian Express article
