Monier Monier-Williams

See also: Williams

Sir Monier Monier-Williams (Bombay, India, November 12th 1819 - Cannes, France, April 11th 1899) is a Indianiste English which taught the Eastern languages in England and compiled one of the dictionaries Sanskrit - English most usually employed.

Monier-Williams is the son of colonel Monier Williams, surveyor-general of the presidency of Bombay. He enters, in 1837, with the Balliol College of the Université of Oxford, then ensign the Sanskrit, the Persan and the Hindî at the Haileybury university of the English Compagnie of the Eastern Indies of 1844 until in 1858, year when India passes under the government of the British crown following the Révolte of Cipayes.

He teaches then the Eastern languages for ten years with Cheltenham, then is elected with the Boden pulpit of Sanskrit of the university of Oxford, following Horace Hayman Wilson, its first holder, who had started, as of his nomination at this station in 1831, the collection of manuscripts in Sanskrit of the university. He had been opposed in this election, which had known an important public repercussion, to max Müller the most obvious candidate and which exceeded it largely in knowledge and literary talent, but whose religious ideas were regarded as too liberal. Indeed, Monier-Williams did not hide that, for him, one of the purposes of the study orientalists was to facilitate the propagation of the Christianisme.

In the particular field of Sanskrit, Monier-Williams did not have however anything to envy his opponent and it made honor with the pulpit by producing a certain number of work of quality like its dictionaries Sanskrit-English and English-Sanskrit, its Indian Sagesse ( Indian Wisdom , 1875), an anthology of the literature in Sanskrit and its translation of Shakuntalâ (1853). During its last years, it is interested particularly in the indigenous religions of India and writing of the works on the Brahmanisme, the Bouddhisme and the Hindouisme which know a certain notoriety.

Its major realization remains however the creation of the Indian Institut of Oxford. It had presented this project in front of the University in 1875 and had gone to solicit in India, this same year, the following one then still in 1883, the financial aid and morals of Indian Princes and important British personalities. It receives an important donation of Lord Brassey and in November 1880, the project is retained by the university which leaves with its load the acquisition of a ground and the construction of a building. Funds are raised and the Prince de Galles comes to pose, in May 1883, the first stone in remembering its voyage in India. The building is finished in 1896 and the Institute, which offers a teaching as well academic as directed towards the training of civil servant for the administration of the Indies ( Indian Civil Service ), will function until Indian independence in 1947.

Its declining health obliges it to leave its post of professor, but it continues to work until its death with Cannes in 1899.

External bond

the dictionary English-Sanskrit on line by the university of Cologne

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