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George Abraham Grierson

September 21, 2023

Sir George Abraham Grierson OM KCIE FBA (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languages and folklore of India during his postings in Bengal and Bihar. He published numerous studies in the journals of learned societies and wrote several books during his administrative career but proposed a formal linguistic survey at the Oriental Congress in 1886 at Vienna. The Congress recommended the idea to the British Government and he was appointed superintendent of the newly created Linguistic Survey of India in 1898. He continued the work until 1928, surveying people across the British Indian territory, documenting spoken languages, recording voices, written forms and was responsible in documenting information on 179 languages, defined by him through a test of mutual unintelligibility, and 544 dialects which he placed in five language families. He published the findings of the Linguistic Survey in a series that consisted of 19 volumes.

Sir George Abraham Grierson

OM KCIE
Grierson in June 1920, photo from the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Born(1851-01-07)7 January 1851
Dublin, Ireland
Died9 March 1941(1941-03-09) (aged 90)
OccupationLinguist
Known forLinguistic Survey of India

Biography Edit

Grierson was born in Glenageary, County Dublin. His father and grandfather (George Grierson) were well-known Dublin printers and publishers. His mother Isabella was the daughter of Henry Ruxton of Ardee. He was educated at St. Bees School, and from the age of 13 at Shrewsbury. He then went up to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was a student of mathematics. Grierson qualified for the Indian Civil Service in 1871 ranking twenty-eighth for the year. He continued studies at Trinity College for two probationary years where he was influenced by Robert Atkinson, professor of oriental languages. He took a deep interest in languages, won prizes for studies in Sanskrit and Hindustani before leaving for the Bengal Presidency in 1873.[1] First posted to Bankipore (Patna) in Bihar, he became Magistrate and Collector at Patna and still later in 1896, Opium Agent for Bihar. He married Lucy Elizabeth Jean, daughter of Maurice Henry Fitzgerald Collis, a Dublin surgeon, in 1880 but they had no children.[2][3]

Grierson attended the Oriental Congress in 1886 at Vienna and proposed the idea of a formal linguistic in India. Grierson was a delegate of the Royal Asiatic Society along with Dr Theodor Duka, Albert Terrien de Lacouperie, Cecil Bendall, and R. N. Cust.[4] At the Congress it was noted that the number of Indian languages was unknown with estimates varying from 20 to 250. A resolution was passed urging the Government to undertake a 'deliberate systematic survey of the languages of India.' The signatories included Karl Bühler, Max Müller, Monier Williams and Grierson. The recommendation was made to the British Government and in 1898 he was appointed Superintendent of the newly formed Linguistic Survey of India. For the survey a standard set of materials was sought. He had government officials collect material for every language, dialect, and subdialect, going from village to village and sampling across the classes and sexes. He provided forms and instructional material to his correspondents.[5] He sought a version of the parable of the prodigal son, oral narratives and a predefined list of 241 words and phrases (this list had been made by Sir George Campbell in 1866). The parable was chosen because 'it contains the three personal pronouns, most of the cases found in the declension of nouns, and the present, past, and future tenses of the verb'.[6] The survey classified the languages of 290,000,000 people.[7] In 1900 he moved to England "for convenience of consulting European libraries and scholars".[8] By 1903 most of the data had come in and he retired from the Indian Civil Service. He spent the following thirty years editing the enormous amount of material gathered[1] and worked briefly in collaboration with the Norwegian linguist Sten Konow (who contributed to volume III on Tibetan languages).[2] On 8 May 1928 the completion of the Linguistic Survey of India was celebrated at the Criterion Restaurant by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland with Lord Birkenhead proposing the toast.[9]

Grierson published scholarly works throughout his career: on the dialects and peasant life of Bihar, on Hindi literature, on bhakti, and on linguistics. His contemporaries noted both his lack of sympathy for Advaita Vedanta, which he regarded as "pandit religion," and his "warm appreciation of the monotheistic devotion of the country folk".[2][10] He also published on literary texts and writers, including a paper on Kalidasa in 1877.[11]

Most of Grierson's later work deals with linguistics. In a celebratory account of his life, F. W. Thomas and R. L. Turner refer to the extensive publications of the Linguistic Survey of India as "a great Imperial museum, representing and systematically classifying the linguistic botany of India".[12]

Grierson died in Camberley, Surrey, England at Rathfarnham, the house he built and named after his grandfather's castle in Dublin.[2]

Honours Edit


He was also an honorary member of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha at Benares.[14] He was an honorary fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, the Modern Language Association, Linguistic Society of India, and the Bangla Sahitya Parishad. [11] He received several other honorary degrees from the universities of Halle, Cambridge, Oxford, and Bihar.[2] A literary award of India, the Dr. George Grierson Award, was named in his honour in the late 20th century.

Publications Edit

Grierson was a prolific writer. On his 85th birthday, an article was contributed in his honour and published by the School of Oriental Studies which included a list of Grierson's publications occupying 22 pages.[15][16] The following are a few selected books and papers:

  • Grierson, George Abraham (1898–1928). Linguistic Survey of India. Calcutta: Government Press.
  • Grierson, George Abraham (1885). Bihar Peasant Life, Being a Discursive Catalogue of the Surroundings of the People of That Province, With Many Illustrations From Photographs Taken By the Author. Prepared Under Orders of the Government of Bengal. London: Trübner & Co.
  • Grierson, George Abraham. Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihari Language (1883–87) 3 vols. ISBN 81-7835-451-9
  • Grierson, Sir George Abraham (1906). The Pisaca languages of north-western India. The Royal asiatic Society, London.
  • Grierson George Abraham, Linguistic Survey of India, 11 Vols. in 19 Parts
  • Grierson, George Abraham (1916). A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal.
  • Grierson, George Abraham (1920). Ishkashmi, Zebaki and Yazghulami. An Account of Three Eranian Dialects. London: Royal Asiatic Society.
  • Grierson, Sir George; Barnett, Lionel D. Barnett (1920). Lalla-Vakyani. London: Royal Asiatic Society.
  • The Lay of Alha: A Saga of Rajput Chivalry as Sung by Minstrels of Northern India, SAMP early 20th-century Indian books project, Editor Sir George Abraham Grierson, Translated by William Waterfield, Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1923
  • Grierson, George Abraham 1909. Gleanings from the Bhakta-Mala. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 607–644.
  • Grierson, George Abraham 1910. Gleanings from the Bhakta-Mala. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 269–306.
  • Grierson, George Abraham 1910. Gleanings from the Bhakta-Mala. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 87–109.
  • Grierson, George Abraham, 2007, Kachhi Ji Bhasa VIgnanik Vadhod (ક્છી જ્ી ભાસા વ̃ગ્ નાનીક્ વાધૉડ઼્), Translated in Kachhi Language from Linguistic Survey of India, Volume 8, Part 1 (1919) by Manilal Gala, Vadhod PIrkasan: 1–122.[17]

See also Edit

References Edit

  1. ^ a b McGuire, James; Quinn, James (2009). Dictionary of Irish Biography. Vol. III. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy-Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521633314.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Turner, R.L. (revised by John D. Haigh) (2004). "Grierson, Sir George Abraham (1851–1941)". In Haigh, John D (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1 (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33572. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. ^ [J. L. M.] (1941). "Obituary: Sir George Abraham Grierson, O.M.; 7 January, 1851-7 March, 1941". Man. 41: 62–63. JSTOR 2793347.
  4. ^ "VI. Seventh International Oriental Congress". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. New Series. 19 (1): 185–189. 1 January 1887. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00019353. ISSN 1474-0591. S2CID 250349868.
  5. ^ Pandit, Prabodh B. (1975). "The linguistic survey of India - perspectives on language use" (PDF). In Ohannessian, Sirarpi; Charles A Ferguson; Edgar C. Polome (eds.). Language surveys in developing nations: papers and reports on sociolinguistic surveys. Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics. pp. 71–85.
  6. ^ Sen, Siddhartha (2002). "George Abraham Grierson, 1851–1941". Hermathena (172): 39–55. JSTOR 23041283.
  7. ^ "Sir George Grierson". Birmingham Daily Post. 10 March 1941. p. 6 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  8. ^ Thomas and Turner, p. 3.
  9. ^ "Sir George Grierson and the "Linguistic Survey of India"". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (3): 711–718. 1928.
  10. ^ Thomas and Turner:p. 11.
  11. ^ a b c Gode, P. K. (1939). "Sir George Abraham Grierson (1852-1941)". Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. 21 (3/4): 310–311. ISSN 0378-1143. JSTOR 41688849.
  12. ^ Thomas and Turner:p. 18.
  13. ^ "University intelligence". The Times. No. 36783. London. 2 June 1902. p. 9.
  14. ^ Anonymous (1936). Grierson Commemoration Volume. Lahore: The Linguistic Society of India. p. 2.
  15. ^ Turner, R. L. (1941). "Sir George A. Grierson, O.M., K.C.I.E." The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 73 (4): 383–386. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00097823. JSTOR 25221815.
  16. ^ White, Edith M. (1936). "Bibliography of the Published Writings of Sir George A. Grierson". Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London. 8 (2/3): 297–318. JSTOR 608043.
  17. ^ Grierson, George Abraham (2007). Kachhi Ji Bhasa VIgnanik Vadhod (in Kachin). Translated by Gala, Manilal. Kachh: Vadhod PIrkasan. pp. 1–122. ASIN B08NZTWTWT.

Sources Edit

  • Thomas, F. W. and R. L. Turner. 1941. George Abraham Grierson 1851–1941. London: Humphrey Milford Amen House, E.C.
  • Thomas, F. W., and R. L. Turner. 1942. George Abraham Grierson 1851–1941. Proceedings of the British Academy, 28:283–306.

External links Edit

 
Wikisource has original works by or about:
George Abraham Grierson
  • BNF Gallica - digitized gramophone recordings from the Linguistic Survey of India
  • - gramophone recordings from the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI)
  • Works by or about George Abraham Grierson at Internet Archive
  • Photos of Sir George Abraham Grierson

September 21, 2023
george, abraham, grierson, kcie, january, 1851, march, 1941, irish, administrator, linguist, british, india, worked, indian, civil, service, interest, philology, linguistics, pursue, studies, languages, folklore, india, during, postings, bengal, bihar, publish. Sir George Abraham Grierson OM KCIE FBA 7 January 1851 9 March 1941 was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languages and folklore of India during his postings in Bengal and Bihar He published numerous studies in the journals of learned societies and wrote several books during his administrative career but proposed a formal linguistic survey at the Oriental Congress in 1886 at Vienna The Congress recommended the idea to the British Government and he was appointed superintendent of the newly created Linguistic Survey of India in 1898 He continued the work until 1928 surveying people across the British Indian territory documenting spoken languages recording voices written forms and was responsible in documenting information on 179 languages defined by him through a test of mutual unintelligibility and 544 dialects which he placed in five language families He published the findings of the Linguistic Survey in a series that consisted of 19 volumes Sir George Abraham GriersonOM KCIEGrierson in June 1920 photo from the National Portrait Gallery London Born 1851 01 07 7 January 1851Dublin IrelandDied9 March 1941 1941 03 09 aged 90 OccupationLinguistKnown forLinguistic Survey of India Contents 1 Biography 2 Honours 3 Publications 4 See also 5 References 6 Sources 7 External linksBiography EditGrierson was born in Glenageary County Dublin His father and grandfather George Grierson were well known Dublin printers and publishers His mother Isabella was the daughter of Henry Ruxton of Ardee He was educated at St Bees School and from the age of 13 at Shrewsbury He then went up to Trinity College Dublin where he was a student of mathematics Grierson qualified for the Indian Civil Service in 1871 ranking twenty eighth for the year He continued studies at Trinity College for two probationary years where he was influenced by Robert Atkinson professor of oriental languages He took a deep interest in languages won prizes for studies in Sanskrit and Hindustani before leaving for the Bengal Presidency in 1873 1 First posted to Bankipore Patna in Bihar he became Magistrate and Collector at Patna and still later in 1896 Opium Agent for Bihar He married Lucy Elizabeth Jean daughter of Maurice Henry Fitzgerald Collis a Dublin surgeon in 1880 but they had no children 2 3 Grierson attended the Oriental Congress in 1886 at Vienna and proposed the idea of a formal linguistic in India Grierson was a delegate of the Royal Asiatic Society along with Dr Theodor Duka Albert Terrien de Lacouperie Cecil Bendall and R N Cust 4 At the Congress it was noted that the number of Indian languages was unknown with estimates varying from 20 to 250 A resolution was passed urging the Government to undertake a deliberate systematic survey of the languages of India The signatories included Karl Buhler Max Muller Monier Williams and Grierson The recommendation was made to the British Government and in 1898 he was appointed Superintendent of the newly formed Linguistic Survey of India For the survey a standard set of materials was sought He had government officials collect material for every language dialect and subdialect going from village to village and sampling across the classes and sexes He provided forms and instructional material to his correspondents 5 He sought a version of the parable of the prodigal son oral narratives and a predefined list of 241 words and phrases this list had been made by Sir George Campbell in 1866 The parable was chosen because it contains the three personal pronouns most of the cases found in the declension of nouns and the present past and future tenses of the verb 6 The survey classified the languages of 290 000 000 people 7 In 1900 he moved to England for convenience of consulting European libraries and scholars 8 By 1903 most of the data had come in and he retired from the Indian Civil Service He spent the following thirty years editing the enormous amount of material gathered 1 and worked briefly in collaboration with the Norwegian linguist Sten Konow who contributed to volume III on Tibetan languages 2 On 8 May 1928 the completion of the Linguistic Survey of India was celebrated at the Criterion Restaurant by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland with Lord Birkenhead proposing the toast 9 Grierson published scholarly works throughout his career on the dialects and peasant life of Bihar on Hindi literature on bhakti and on linguistics His contemporaries noted both his lack of sympathy for Advaita Vedanta which he regarded as pandit religion and his warm appreciation of the monotheistic devotion of the country folk 2 10 He also published on literary texts and writers including a paper on Kalidasa in 1877 11 Most of Grierson s later work deals with linguistics In a celebratory account of his life F W Thomas and R L Turner refer to the extensive publications of the Linguistic Survey of India as a great Imperial museum representing and systematically classifying the linguistic botany of India 12 Grierson died in Camberley Surrey England at Rathfarnham the house he built and named after his grandfather s castle in Dublin 2 Honours Edit1894 Appointed CIE 1912 Knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire KCIE 1917 1939 Fellow of the British Academy 1927 President of the Gypsy Lore Society 2 1928 Appointed to the Order of Merit OM 1929 Awarded the Sir William Jones Gold Medal established by the Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Campbell Memorial Medal from the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal 11 1902 Honorary Doctorate of Letters D Litt from the University of Dublin 13 He was also an honorary member of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha at Benares 14 He was an honorary fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal the Bihar and Orissa Research Society the Modern Language Association Linguistic Society of India and the Bangla Sahitya Parishad 11 He received several other honorary degrees from the universities of Halle Cambridge Oxford and Bihar 2 A literary award of India the Dr George Grierson Award was named in his honour in the late 20th century Publications EditGrierson was a prolific writer On his 85th birthday an article was contributed in his honour and published by the School of Oriental Studies which included a list of Grierson s publications occupying 22 pages 15 16 The following are a few selected books and papers Grierson George Abraham 1898 1928 Linguistic Survey of India Calcutta Government Press Grierson George Abraham 1885 Bihar Peasant Life Being a Discursive Catalogue of the Surroundings of the People of That Province With Many Illustrations From Photographs Taken By the Author Prepared Under Orders of the Government of Bengal London Trubner amp Co Grierson George Abraham Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihari Language 1883 87 3 vols ISBN 81 7835 451 9 Grierson Sir George Abraham 1906 The Pisaca languages of north western India The Royal asiatic Society London Grierson George Abraham Linguistic Survey of India 11 Vols in 19 Parts Grierson George Abraham 1916 A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language Calcutta Asiatic Society of Bengal Grierson George Abraham 1920 Ishkashmi Zebaki and Yazghulami An Account of Three Eranian Dialects London Royal Asiatic Society Grierson Sir George Barnett Lionel D Barnett 1920 Lalla Vakyani London Royal Asiatic Society The Lay of Alha A Saga of Rajput Chivalry as Sung by Minstrels of Northern India SAMP early 20th century Indian books project Editor Sir George Abraham Grierson Translated by William Waterfield Oxford University Press H Milford 1923 Grierson George Abraham 1909 Gleanings from the Bhakta Mala Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 607 644 Grierson George Abraham 1910 Gleanings from the Bhakta Mala Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 269 306 Grierson George Abraham 1910 Gleanings from the Bhakta Mala Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 87 109 Grierson George Abraham 2007 Kachhi Ji Bhasa VIgnanik Vadhod ક છ જ ભ સ વ ગ ન ન ક વ ધ ડ Translated in Kachhi Language from Linguistic Survey of India Volume 8 Part 1 1919 by Manilal Gala Vadhod PIrkasan 1 122 17 See also EditHerbert Hope RisleyReferences Edit a b McGuire James Quinn James 2009 Dictionary of Irish Biography Vol III Dublin Royal Irish Academy Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780521633314 a b c d e f Turner R L revised by John D Haigh 2004 Grierson Sir George Abraham 1851 1941 In Haigh John D ed Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Vol 1 online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 33572 Subscription or UK public library membership required J L M 1941 Obituary Sir George Abraham Grierson O M 7 January 1851 7 March 1941 Man 41 62 63 JSTOR 2793347 VI Seventh International Oriental Congress Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society New Series 19 1 185 189 1 January 1887 doi 10 1017 S0035869X00019353 ISSN 1474 0591 S2CID 250349868 Pandit Prabodh B 1975 The linguistic survey of India perspectives on language use PDF In Ohannessian Sirarpi Charles A Ferguson Edgar C Polome eds Language surveys in developing nations papers and reports on sociolinguistic surveys Arlington Va Center for Applied Linguistics pp 71 85 Sen Siddhartha 2002 George Abraham Grierson 1851 1941 Hermathena 172 39 55 JSTOR 23041283 Sir George Grierson Birmingham Daily Post 10 March 1941 p 6 via British Newspaper Archive Thomas and Turner p 3 Sir George Grierson and the Linguistic Survey of India The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 3 711 718 1928 Thomas and Turner p 11 a b c Gode P K 1939 Sir George Abraham Grierson 1852 1941 Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 21 3 4 310 311 ISSN 0378 1143 JSTOR 41688849 Thomas and Turner p 18 University intelligence The Times No 36783 London 2 June 1902 p 9 Anonymous 1936 Grierson Commemoration Volume Lahore The Linguistic Society of India p 2 Turner R L 1941 Sir George A Grierson O M K C I E The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 73 4 383 386 doi 10 1017 S0035869X00097823 JSTOR 25221815 White Edith M 1936 Bibliography of the Published Writings of Sir George A Grierson Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies University of London 8 2 3 297 318 JSTOR 608043 Grierson George Abraham 2007 Kachhi Ji Bhasa VIgnanik Vadhod in Kachin Translated by Gala Manilal Kachh Vadhod PIrkasan pp 1 122 ASIN B08NZTWTWT Sources EditThomas F W and R L Turner 1941 George Abraham Grierson 1851 1941 London Humphrey Milford Amen House E C Thomas F W and R L Turner 1942 George Abraham Grierson 1851 1941 Proceedings of the British Academy 28 283 306 External links Edit nbsp Wikisource has original works by or about George Abraham Grierson BNF Gallica digitized gramophone recordings from the Linguistic Survey of India Digital South Asia Library partly defunct gramophone recordings from the Linguistic Survey of India LSI Works by or about George Abraham Grierson at Internet Archive Photos of Sir George Abraham Grierson Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title George Abraham Grierson amp oldid 1132598260, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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