Charles Wilkins

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Charles Wilkins (* 1749 in Frome, Somerset ; † May 13, 1836 in London ) was an English orientalist and typesetter who was the first western scholar to translate the Bhagavad Gita and to produce fonts for the Devanagari script .

life and work

After training as a printer, Wilkins traveled to India in 1770 to work for the East India Company . Due to his talent for foreign languages, he quickly learned Persian and Bengali and developed fonts for letterpress printing in these languages.

In 1784 he helped William Jones to found the Asiatic Society of Bengal and went to Varanasi (Benares) to study Sanskrit there under the guidance of an Indian scholar . During this time he began to translate the Mahabharata into English . This was never completed, but some extracts were later published, including the full text of the Bhagavad Gita (1785). This was translated into French in 1787 and into German in 1802 and had a great influence on romantic literature and the perception of Hindu philosophy in the European intellectual world.

In 1786 Wilkins returned to England and published his translation of the Hitopadesha collection of stories a year later . He took on leading positions in oriental libraries and developed fonts for the Devanagari script. In 1808 he published his Grammar of the Sanskrita Language . In 1833 he was knighted as a knight bachelor and knight of the Guelph Order due to his many services to oriental studies . Since 1815 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Fonts

  • Bhagavat-geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon. , C. Nourse, London 1785.
  • The Heetopades of Veeshnoo-Sarma, in a Series of Connected Fables, Interspersed with Moral, Prudential and Political Maxims. 1787.
  • Grammar of the Sanskrita Language. Bulmer, and Black, Parry and Kingsbury, London 1808.
  • Persian and Arabic Dictionary. A Vocabulary Persian, Arabic, and English; Abridged from the Quarto Edition of Richardson's Dictionary. 1810.

Literature and web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 334.
  2. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 1, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 469.
personal data
SURNAME Wilkins, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wilkins, Sir Charles (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English orientalist and typesetter
DATE OF BIRTH 1749
PLACE OF BIRTH Frome, Somerset
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1836
Place of death London