author
Maurice Bloomfield
1855–1928
An influential Sanskrit scholar who helped bring Vedic studies to a wider English-speaking audience, he spent decades teaching and researching at Johns Hopkins University. His work ranged from ancient Indian religion and language to folktales, showing an unusually broad curiosity.
1 Audiobook
Cerberus, the dog of Hades: The history of an idea
by Maurice Bloomfield
About the author
Born in Bielitz, in Austrian Silesia, in 1855, he moved to the United States as a child and went on to study Sanskrit and comparative philology. After further study in Europe, he built a long academic career at Johns Hopkins University, where he became known as a leading scholar of Sanskrit and Vedic literature.
His books include The Atharva-Veda and the Gopatha-Brahmana, Vedic Concordance, and The Religion of the Veda. He also wrote on linguistic and literary subjects beyond Sanskrit, including folklore and biblical traditions, which helped make his scholarship useful to both specialists and general readers.
He died in 1928, leaving behind a reputation for careful, wide-ranging research. He is also remembered in the history of language study through his family connection to the linguist Leonard Bloomfield, his nephew.