1903.] Obituary notice of Professor Coivell. 53 



Wilson, then Librarian of the India House. He gradually acquired 

 considerable proficiency in Sanskrit ; for in 1851 he published a trans- 

 lation of Kalidasa's play " Vikramorvasi." His actual systematic study 

 under Wilson commenced, however, only in 1853, as we learn from his 

 address to the Cambridge Electoral Roll. In 1847 he married Miss 

 Elizabeth Charlesworth, and in 1850 entered the University of Oxford, 

 being then obliged, as a married man, to enter a hall (Magdalen Hall), 

 not a College. He took honours both in Classics (First Class, Final 1854) 

 and in Mathematics, and the University somewhat tardily acknow- 

 ledged his eminence by the honorary degree of D.C.L. in 1896. In 185G 

 he was appointed Professor of History at Presidency College, Calcutta, 

 and in 1858 also Principal of the Sanskrit College in the same City. Here 

 he remained till 1864, and laid the real foundation of his reputation as 

 an Orientalist, the happy combination of wide and deep Western Cul- 

 ture with the concentrated traditional lore of the Eastern pandit. 



In 1867 Cowell was elected to the Chair of Sanskrit, then just 

 established at Cambridge, where the rest of his life was spent, both as a 

 University Professor and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College (1874) . 

 Here he taught not only Sanskrit of varied periods and styles (e.g., 

 Indian Philosophy, thirty years ago hardly known in the Continental 

 Universities), but also Comparative Philology aud Persian. These sub- 

 jects have now been provided by the University with separate teachers, 

 and the same has been done for elementary Sauskrit, and justly, so as to 

 economize the lavish expenditure of precious time that Cowell would 

 bestow as freely on the beginner as on the advanced student. His Pali 

 classes, started some five and twenty years ago, have resulted in the 

 Cambridge translation of the Jataka-book, under his guidance. More 

 recently he read Zend with several pupils. 



His own mental history may be illustrated by some of his chief 

 works. To the Calcutta period belong his two editions and transla- 

 tions of Upanisads, and the text and translation of the difficult work 

 of Indian logic, the " Kusumanjali." Many native scholars were at the 

 same time encouraged to edit texts which appeared with English intro- 

 ductions by the Professor. Similarly, on his return to England, his first 

 Cambridge pupil, Palmer Boyd, was induced to translate the newly dis- 

 covered Buddhist drama, 'Nagananda, which appeared with an introduc- 

 tion by Cowell. To the same time belongs his new edition of the Prakrit 

 Grammar of Vararuci, of which he had issued a first edition in Oxford 

 days. Two important works published in Cambridge days represent 

 the continuance of researches in Indian philosophy begun in India. 

 These are the "Aphorisms of S'andilya " (1878), and the Sarvadarsana- 

 samgraha," translated (portions also by Mr. A. E. Gough) in 1882. 



