He was born in
New York City on February 9, 1862.[1] He graduated from
Columbia University in 1883. He was a fellow in letters there from 1883 to 1886, and an instructor in
Anglo-Saxon and the Iranian languages from 1887 to 1890. After studying at the
University of Halle from 1887 to 1889 he became an
adjunct professor of English language and literature. In 1895, he was appointed public lecturer and also appointed to the newly founded professorship of Indo-Iranian languages at
Columbia University, where he remained until 1935.
He was well known as a lecturer on
English literature and the Orient. In 1901, during a visit to
India and
Ceylon, he received special attention from the
Parsees, who presented to Columbia a valuable collection of
Zoroastrian manuscripts in recognition of the instruction there given by him in their ancient texts. In 1903 he made a second journey to the Orient, this time visiting
Iran. He also visited
Central Asia sometime before 1918.
Jackson's grammar of
Avestan, the language used in the Zoroastrian scriptures, is still considered to be the seminal work on the topic. Jackson was one of the directors of the
American Oriental Society. He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society in 1909.[2]
Jackson, A V Williams.
A History of India. (Editor). Full text online at ibiblio.org (All nine volumes in HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations, footnotes and a combined index)
He made many contributions to the Journal of the American Oriental Society.
^
abEd Perry (August 8, 1937). "Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson". The New York Times.
JSTOR594807. A. V. Williams Jackson was born, February 9, 1862, not far from the present site of Columbia University, and died at his home overlooking its gates ...
^W. T. W. and A. C. (October 1914). "A Catalogue of the Collection of Persian Manuscripts, Including Also Some Turkish and Arabic Presented by Alexander Smith Cochran by A. V. Williams Jackson; Abraham Yohannan". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 26 (139): 39.
JSTOR859845.
^Haas, George C. O. (June 1938). "Bibliography of A. V. Williams Jackson". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 58 (2): 241–257.
doi:
10.2307/594810.
JSTOR594810. p. 257