Henry Thomas Colebrooke
Henry Thomas Colebrooke [ carbon bruck ] (* June 15, 1765, † March 10, 1837 in London ) was the first Sanskritist his time, the main founder of the study of Indian literature in Europe and president of the Royal Asiatic Society. He also worked as a lawyer and botanist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Colebr. ".
Life
Colebrooke was the son of the banker and Member of Parliament Sir George Colebrooke, who is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the East India Company was from 1769. Colebrooke was taught at first privately in classical languages , French, German and mathematics. It also awoke his interest in mathematics. In 1782 he went to the East India Company to India. He was the first administration official, judge in Mirzapur, 1801 the Court of Appeal in Calcutta and then British resident at the court of Berar. In order to study Indian law, he learned Sanskrit. In 1805 he became professor of Indian law and Sanskrit at the College of Fort William ( India) in Calcutta, where he wrote his Sanskrit grammar. October 1814 he returned to Europe. In 1823 he was co-founder of the Royal Asiatic Society. In 1824 he was president of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was also a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, a member of the Linnean Society and the Geological Society in London.
Indian law
In Sanskrit, the ancient sacred language of India, the British were led first by the practical needs of justice in India. This need also called the first major work of Colebrooke forth, his translation of an extensive Indian law work on inheritance law, property law and law of obligations (A digest of Hindu law on contracts and successions, Calcutta 1798, 3 volumes, London 1801, 3 volumes; Madras 1864, 3 volumes). She was followed by complement its translation of two treatises on the law of inheritance ( 1810; reprinted in Whitley Stokes ' Hindu law books, 1865).
Colebrooke led these translations still without any lexical aids, only with the support of some Indian pundits with extraordinary accuracy and admirable skill in the reproduction of numerous legal technical terms of Sanskrit literature. They gave not only the pattern of subsequent transfers of Indian law works from, but also made for decades, the principal basis of English manuals for Indian law and jurisprudence of the Anglo-Indian courts, where it takes the Indian national law was applied.
Indian literature
The same care and philological thoroughness records the numerous essays by Colebrooke, which affect almost all parts of Indian literature, his treatises on the Vedas, on the philosophical systems of the Indians, on the Indian sects, about the Indian measurement and monetary system, about Sanskrit and Prakritpoesie, on Indian inscriptions, about the Indian and Arab Zodiac and on the obligations of an Indian widow ( widow burning ).
Colebrooke's essays first appeared in the publications of the Asiatic societies of Calcutta and London, later it was were collected repeatedly (for example, by Edward Byles Cowell, Miscellaneous essays by Henry Thomas Colebrooke, London 1873, 2 volumes, this as the third volume Colebrooke's biography of his son).
Grammar and lexicography
Fundamental to the study of Indian grammarians and lexicographers had his unfinished Sanskrit grammar (Calcutta 1805), which led him first edition of the grammar of Panini (1810 ) and edited by his old Sanskrit dictionary Amara - kosha. Important for the history of mathematics is its transfer from the Sanskrit algebra of the Hindus (London 1817). Colebrooke also recognized as one of the first of the close relationship of Sanskrit with the Indo-European languages of Europe.
Biography
Sir Thomas Edward Colebrooke, The life of Henry Thomas Colebrooke 1873
Ehrentaxa
In his honor, was a kind from the kind of Losbäume, Clerodendron colebrookianum Walp. Named.
Works
- A grammar of the Sanscrit language, Calcutta 1805
- Dictionary of the Sanskrit Language, Serampore 1808
- Algebra with arithmetic and mensuration from the Sanskrit of Brahmegupta and Bhascara, London 1817
- Description of select Indian Plants 1818
- On Boswellia and Certain Indian Terebinthaceae 1827
- Miscellaneous Essays, 2 vols, London 1857
- Miscellaneous essays, 2 volumes, 1857, new edition 1873
- H. Th Colebrooke 's essay on the holy scriptures of the Indians in 1847