Isaac Jacob Schmidt

He was born the son of an accountant and a businessman in Amsterdam and attended from 1785 to 1791 the boys' school of the Evangelical Brethren Church in Neuwied. After the demise of his father's business in the wake of the Napoleonic occupation, he emigrated in 1798 to Russia to work in the commercial establishment of the Evangelical Brethren Church in Sarepta on the Volga. As part of its merchant activities ( he should recover debts ), he spent a lot of time from 1804 to 1806 at the Kalmyks, learned Mongolian and Kalmyk and engaged in their culture. 1807 to 1812 he was an accountant of the branch in Saratov. In 1812 he married and was transferred to Moscow, but shortly afterwards went before the burning of Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Most of his manuscripts, including Mongolian manuscripts was lost in the burning of Moscow. In St. Petersburg, he was treasurer of the Russian Bible Society, for which he translated the Bible into Kalmyk and Mongolian. From 1819 he was able to devote himself to the work of translation. In 1824 he published his first major work to Mongolian ( and Tibetans ), which led to a dispute with the Berlin orientalist Julius Klaproth. In 1827 he received his doctorate at the University of Rostock. 1828 published a paper on the roots of Buddhism. In 1833 he was awarded the Russian State and Vladimir order. In 1837 he was on the Board of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

1829 appeared his translation of the History of the Mongols in 1831 his Mongolian grammar and in 1835 his German -Russian - Mongolian dictionary. He also published on Buddhism and the culture of the Tibetans and 1839 he published a grammar of Tibetan and 1841 a Tibetan -German Dictionary.

In 1825, he became a foreign member of the Société Asiatique in Paris in 1826 and corresponding (1829 full ) member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1829 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society in both Britain and India ( Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal ) and also the Dutch van Kunsten en Bataviaasch Genootschap Wetenschapen.

Works ( Online)

  • Tribes of the Mongols, Communications of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1834
  • Grammar of the Mongolian, St. Petersburg Academy in 1831, Internet Archive
October 14 1779 1847 Buddhist studies Mongolic languages Old Sarepta Volga River Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Neue Deutsche Biographie Integrated Authority File
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