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Edward Byles Cowell, FBA (23 January 1826 – 9 February 1903) was a noted translator of Persian poetry and the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University. [1]
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Edward Byles Cowell, FBA (23 January 1826 – 9 February 1903) was a noted translator of Persian poetry and the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University. [1]
Cowell was born in Ipswich, the son of Charles Cowell and Marianne Byles. [2] Samuel Cowell, the printer, was his uncle and Elizabeth "Beth" Cowell, the painter, was his sister. [3]
He became interested in Oriental languages at the age of fifteen, when he found a copy of Sir William Jones's works (including his Persian Grammar) in the public library. Self-taught, he began translating and publishing Hafez within the year.
On the death of his father in 1842 he took over the family business. He married in 1845, and in 1850 entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied and catalogued Persian manuscripts for the Bodleian Library. From 1856 to 1867 he lived in Calcutta as professor of English history at Presidency College. He was also as principal of Sanskrit College from 1858 to 1864. [4] In this year he discovered a manuscript of Omar Khayyám's quatrains in the Asiatic Society's library and sent a copy to London for his friend and student, Edward Fitzgerald, who then produced the famous English translations (the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam , 1859). He also published, unsigned, an introduction to Khayyám with translations of thirty quatrains in the Calcutta Review (1858).
Having studied Hindustani, Bengali, and Sanskrit with Indian scholars, he returned to England to take up an appointment as the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge. He was professor from 1867 until his death in 1903. [5] He was made an honorary member of the German Oriental Society (DMG) in 1895, was awarded the Royal Asiatic Society's first gold medal in 1898, and in 1902 became a founding member of the British Academy.
In 1904 Macmillan published Life and Letters of Edward Byles Cowell: Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge, 1867–1903 by his cousin George Cowell, F.R.C.S. [6]
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia".
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī, commonly known as Omar Khayyam, was a Persian polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire, and lived during the period of the Seljuk dynasty, around the time of the First Crusade.
A rubāʿī or chahārgāna is a poem or a verse of a poem in Persian poetry in the form of a quatrain, consisting of four lines.
Arthur John Arberry FBA was a British scholar of Arabic literature, Persian studies, and Islamic studies. He was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. His English translation of the Qur'an, The Koran Interpreted, is popular amongst academics worldwide.
Edward Granville BrowneFBA was a British Iranologist. He published numerous articles and books, mainly in the areas of history and literature.
Friedrich Martin von Bodenstedt was a German author.
Professor Johann Georg Bühler was a German scholar of ancient Indian languages and law.
The influence of Persian literature in Western culture is historically significant. In order to avoid what E.G. Browne calls "an altogether inadequate judgment of the intellectual activity of that ingenious and talented people" (E.G.Browne, p4), many centers of academia throughout the world today from Berlin to Japan have permanent programs for Persian studies for the literary heritage of Persia.
The Divyāvadāna or Divine narratives is a Sanskrit anthology of Buddhist avadana tales, many originating in Mūlasarvāstivādin vinaya texts. It may be dated to 2nd century CE. The stories themselves are therefore quite ancient and may be among the first Buddhist texts ever committed to writing, but this particular collection of them is not attested prior to the seventeenth century. Typically, the stories involve the Buddha explaining to a group of disciples how a particular individual, through actions in a previous life, came to have a particular karmic result in the present. A predominant theme is the vast merit accrued from making offerings to enlightened beings or at stupas and other holy sites related to the Buddha.
The Harshacharita is the biography of Indian emperor Harsha by Banabhatta, also known as Bana, who was a Sanskrit writer of seventh-century CE India. He was the Asthana Kavi, meaning Court Poet, of Harsha. The Harshacharita was the first composition of Bana and is considered to be the beginning of writing of historical poetic works in the Sanskrit language.
Byles is an English surname and/or transliteration of the Gaelic O'Boyles. People with that name include:
Ajjada Adibhatla Narayana Das was a multifaceted gem of a talent in diverse fields of learning and forms of fine arts in Madras Presidency, British India. He was born in Ajjada village, near Bobbili, presently in Balijipeta mandal of Vizianagaram district, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Robert Chalmers, 1st Baron Chalmers, was a British civil servant, and a Pali and Buddhist scholar. In later life, he served as the Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge.
Frederick William Thomas, usually cited as F. W. Thomas, was an English Indologist and Tibetologist.
Edward Henry Whinfield (1836–1922) was a translator of Persian literature. He wrote the first well-commented English translations of Hafez and Rumi, as well as a side-by-side translation of 500 quatrains of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in 1883.
Edward FitzGerald or Fitzgerald was an English poet and writer. His most famous poem is the first and best-known English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which has kept its reputation and popularity since the 1860s.
Edward Heron-Allen FRS was an English polymath, writer, scientist and Persian scholar who translated the works of Omar Khayyam.
Sandford Arthur Strong was an English orientalist, art historian and librarian.
Maulawi Āghā Aḥmad ʿAlī was a 19th-century Bengali academic, historian and scholar of the Persian language. In addition to Persian, he also composed poetry in Urdu. He is seen as one of the greatest Persian scholars of Dhaka, and even Bengal as a whole.
Robert Alexander Neil, who published as R. A. Neil, was a Scottish classical scholar. He lectured in classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was University Lecturer in Sanskrit. He was acknowledged as an authority on Greek literature and on comparative philology, and collaborated with scholars including Edward Byles Cowell and Jane Ellen Harrison, to whom he may have been engaged at the time of his death.
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