George Abraham Grierson

Sir George Abraham Grierson
OM KCIE
Born 1851
Dublin, Ireland
Died 1941
Occupation Linguist
Known for Linguistic Survey of India

Sir George Abraham Grierson OM KCIE (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish linguistic scholar and civil servant who conducted the Linguistic Survey of India (1898–1928), obtaining information on 364 languages and dialects.

Biography

Grierson was born in Glenageary, County Dublin. His father and grandfather (George Grierson) were well-known Dublin printers and publishers.

He was educated at St. Bees School, Cumberland and Trinity College, Dublin, where he was a student of mathematics. Grierson qualified for the Indian Civil Service in 1871 with very good results. He also won prizes for Sanskrit and Hindustani in Trinity during his two probationary years spent in Dublin.[1] In India, he reached the Bengal Presidency in 1873. He was posted to Bankipore in Bihar. He would eventually become Magistrate and Collector at Patna and later, Opium Agent for Bihar. In 1898 he was appointed Superintendent of the newly formed Linguistic Survey of India and moved to England "for convenience of consulting European libraries and scholars".[2] By the time Grierson retired from the Indian Civil Service in 1903, most of the data had come in. He spent the following thirty years editing the enormous amount of material gathered.[1]

Grierson published scholarly works throughout his career: on the dialects and peasant life of Bihar, on Hindi literature, on bhakti, and on linguistics. His contemporaries noted both his lack of sympathy for Advaita Vedanta, which he regarded as "pandit religion," and his "warm appreciation of the monotheistic devotion of the country folk".[3]

Most of Grierson's later work deals with linguistics. In a celebratory account of his life, F.W. Thomas and R.L. Turner refer to the extensive publications of the Linguistic Survey of India as "a great Imperial museum, representing and systematically classifying the linguistic botany of India".[4]

He died in Camberley, Surrey, England.

Honours

Grierson received an honorary Doctorate of Letters (D.Litt.) from the University of Dublin in June 1902.[5] In 1928 Grierson was appointed to the Order of Merit (OM).[6] He was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE). A literary award of India, the Dr. George Grierson Award, was named in his honor.

Publications

See also

References

  1. 1 2 McGuire, James; Quinn, James (2009). Dictionary of Irish Biography. Volume III. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy-Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521633314.
  2. ↑ Thomas and Turner n.d., 3
  3. ↑ Thomas and Turner n.d., 11
  4. ↑ n.d., 18
  5. ↑ "University intelligence" The Times (London). Monday, 2 June 1902. (36783), p. 9.
  6. ↑ The Lost Scholars of Kashmir

Sources

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about:
George Abraham Grierson
  1. Photos of Sir George Grierson
  2. Gramaphone recordings from Linguistic Survey of India
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