Arthur Llewellyn Basham

Arthur Llewellyn Basham ( born May 24, 1914 in Loughton ( Essex ), † 27 January 1986 in Calcutta) was a British Indologist and historian.

Basham 's father and mother were journalists and the stories of his father, who was stationed in the First World War in India, he had his first contacts with India. He studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies ( SOAS ), London University with a bachelor's degree in Sanskrit. After the Second World War, where he worked for the Civil Defense Department, he went to the back SOAS, where he received his doctorate at 1950 LD Barnett ( History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas ). In 1948 he became Lecturer in 1953 and Reader in 1957 professor. He headed the Department of History at SOAS until 1965, when he went to the Australian National University as a professor of Oriental civilization and head of the history department. In 1979 he retired and was then a visiting professor at several universities, most recently at the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, where he died of cancer. It is located on the Old Military graveyard of All Saints Cathedral buried in Shillong.

In his time at SOAS he was the teacher of some later known Indian historian Romila Thapar as RS Sharma. Very influential and the image of early India influential was his book The wonder did what India by 1954.

1964/65 he was director of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He was several honorary doctorate (D. Litt. , University of London in 1966, universities of Kurukshetra, Nava Nalanda Mahavihara ) and received 1975 Bimala Churn Law Gold Medal of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta.

He was married in second marriage (1964 ) with an Indian woman who studied with him, and had by her a son and a daughter. He played the piano very well and composed in his youth. In 1934 he published a book of poetry.

A biography of him was published in 1997 by SK Maity.

Writings

• History and doctrines of the Ajivikas, 1951
• The wonder did what India, Sidgwick and Jackson, London 1954, 1963, 1967 Paperback Macmillan 1981
• With Kenneth G. Zysk The origins and development of classical hinduism, Oxford University Press 1991