Professor Johann Georg Bühler (19 July 1837 – 8 April 1898) was a German scholar of ancient Indian languages and law.
Early life and education
Bühler was born to Rev. Johann G. Bühler in
Borstel,
Hanover, attended grammar school in Hanover, where he mastered
Greek and
Latin, then university as a student of theology and philosophy at
Göttingen, where he studied classical
philology,
Sanskrit,
Zend,
Persian,
Armenian, and
Arabic. In 1858 he received his doctorate in eastern languages and
archaeology; his thesis explored the suffix -tês in Greek grammar. That same year he went to
Paris to study Sanskrit manuscripts, and in 1859 onwards to
London, where he remained until October 1862. This time was used mainly for the study of the
Vedic manuscripts at the India Office and the
Bodleian Library at
Oxford University. While in England, Bühler was first a private teacher and later (from May 1861) assistant to the Queen's librarian in
Windsor Castle.[1]
Academic career
In Fall 1862 Bühler was appointed assistant at the
Göttingen library; he moved there in October. While settling in, he received an invitation via Prof.
Max Müller to join the
Benares Sanskrit College in
India. Before this could be settled, he also received (again via Prof. Müller) an offer of Professor of Oriental Languages at the
Elphinstone College,
Bombay (now
Mumbai). Bühler responded immediately and arrived in Bombay on 10 February 1863. Noted Sanskrit and legal scholar
Kashinath Trimbak Telang was then a student at the college. In the next year Bühler became a Fellow of
Bombay University and member of the Bombay Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society. He was to remain in India until 1880. During this time he collected a remarkable number of texts for the Indian government and the libraries of
Berlin,
Cambridge University, and
Oxford University.
In the year 1878 he published his translations of the Paiyalachchhi, the oldest
Prakrit dictionary, with glossary and translation. He also took responsibility for the translation of the
Apastamba,
Dharmasutra etc. in Professor
Max Müller's monumental compilation and translation, the Sacred Books of the East, vols. 2, 14, and 25.
In 1880 he returned to Europe and taught as a professor of Indian philology and archeology at the
University of Vienna, where he worked until the end of his life.[2] On 8 April 1898 Bühler drowned in
Lake Constance, under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Contemporary accounts mostly attributed it to an accident, but it has been speculated that it was a suicide motivated by Bühler's connections to a scandal involving his former student
Alois Anton Führer.[3]
Translation of the Dhauli and Jaugada versions of the Ashoka edicts ("Archeological reports of Southern India", vol. I, 1887)
On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet (German 1895, English 1898)
In the Schriften der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften:
Über eine Sammlung von Sanskrit- und Prakrit-Handschriften (1881)
Über das Zeitalter des Kashmirischen Dichters Somadeva (1885)
Über eine Inschrift des Königs Dharasena von Valabhi (1886)
Über eine neue Inschrift des Gurjara königs Dadda II (1887)
Über eine Sendrakainschrift
Über die indische Sekte der Yainas
Über das Navasahasankacharita des Padmagupta (1888, with Th. Zachariae)
Über das Sukrtasamkirtana des Arisimha (1889)
Die indischen Inschriften und das Alter der indischen Kunstpoesie (1890)
Indian studies: I. The Jagaducarita of Sarvananda, a historical romance from Gujarat (1892); II. Contributions to the history of the
Mahabharata (with J. Kirste); III. On the origin of the Brahmi alphabet (1895)
References
^Jolly, J.; Thite, G. U. (2010). "Georg Bühler (1837-1898)". Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. 91: 155–186.
JSTOR41692167.