author
Sir Monier Monier-Williams
1819–1899
A leading Victorian Sanskrit scholar, he helped shape how generations of English readers encountered Indian languages and literature. He is still widely remembered for the Sanskrit-English dictionary that bears his name.
1 Audiobook
Buddhism, in Its Connexion with Brahmanism and Hinduism, and in Its Contrast with Christianity
by Sir Monier Monier-Williams
About the author
Born in Bombay on November 12, 1819, Monier Monier-Williams became one of the best-known British scholars of Sanskrit in the 19th century. He studied at Oxford, later taught at the East India Company College at Haileybury, and in 1860 was appointed Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, a post he held for the rest of his life.
His work ranged across language study, translation, and teaching. He wrote grammars and other learning tools, but his lasting reputation rests above all on his Sanskrit-English dictionary, first published in the 1870s and expanded in a major edition in 1899. That reference work remained enormously influential and is still frequently consulted today.
Monier Monier-Williams also played a central role in founding Oxford's Indian Institute, which was intended to support the study of India, its languages, and its cultures. He died in Cannes, France, on April 11, 1899, leaving behind a body of scholarship that shaped Western study of Sanskrit for decades.