Ervin Baktay (1890–1963; born Ervin Gottesmann) was an author noted for popularizing

Indian culture Indian culture is the heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies that originated in or are associated with the ethno-linguistically diverse India. The term al ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

.Indo-Hungarian Cultural & Educational Relations, Historical Perspective
, Indian Embassy in Hungary He had started his career as a painter
sikh-heritage.co.uk and he encouraged his niece

Amrita Sher-Gil Amrita Sher-Gil (30 January 1913 – 5 December 1941) was a Hungarian-Indian painter. She has been called "one of the greatest avant-garde women artists of the early 20th century" and a pioneer in modern Indian art. Drawn to painting from an ear ...

to pursue art. Baktay gave up painting to study

eastern religion The Eastern religions are the religions which originated in East, South and Southeast Asia and thus have dissimilarities with Western, African and Iranian religions. This includes the East Asian religions such as Confucianism, Taoism, Chinese ...

s and art, and became a renowned

Indologist Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') is ...

Family

Ervin Baktay was uncle to artist

and nephew to Nagybánya artist Alfréd Gottesmann (1872–1965).

Works

He translated the ''

Kama Sutra The ''Kama Sutra'' (; sa, कामसूत्र, , ; ) is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment in life. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the ''Kama Sutra'' is neither exclusively nor predominantly ...

'' in 1920 and then published a version of the '' Mahābhārata'' in 1923. In 1960, he produced a version of the ''

Ramayana The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...

''.

Selected publications

*Baktay Ervin: Die Kunst Indiens; Übers. Edith Róth; Bearb. Heinz Kucharski; Berlin - Budapest, Terra - Akad. Verlag, 1963.

References

Hungarian Indologists Hungarian Jews People from Dunaharaszti 1890 births 1963 deaths Place of birth missing Burials at Farkasréti Cemetery {{Hungary-academic-bio-stub