Henry George Raverty (31 May 1825 – 20 October 1906) was an officer and linguist in the
British Indian Army.
Life
Raverty was born in
Falmouth, Cornwall
Falmouth ( ; kw, Aberfala) is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It has a total resident population of 21,797 (2011 census).
Etymology
The name Falmouth is of English ...
.
[
He served from 1843 to 1864, rising to the rank of Major in the 3rd Bombay Native Infantry.]gazetteer
A gazetteer is a geographical index or directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas.Aurousseau, 61. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup, social statistics and physical features of a country, region, or con ...
of Peshawar
Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...
. While serving in Peshawar he was taught Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
by the scholar Qazi Abdur Rahman Khan Muhammadzai (1827-1899) and Mirza Muhammad Ismail
Mirza Muhammad Ismail Qandahari (c 1813–1912), usually known as Mirza Muhammad Ismail, was an Afghan religious scholar and the first convert to the Ahmadiyya faith among the Pashtons of the North West Frontier Province of India.Tareekh-e-Ahmadi ...
(1813-1912) and he began to study Afghan poetry
Poetry of the modern-day region called Afghanistan has ancient roots, which is mostly written in Dari and Pashto. Afghan poetry relates to the culture of Afghanistan and is an element of Afghan literature.
History
The region called Afghanistan ...
.''The Pathans – Classic Works & Reading''
On retirement from the army, he returned to England and continued his oriental studies, culminating in his vast ''Notes on Afghanistan and part of Baluchistan'' and his unpublished ''History of Herat''. He died at
Grampound Road
Grampound Road ( kw, Fordh Ponsmeur) is a village in the parish of Ladock, Cornwall, England, north-west of Grampound.
The railway station of that name was opened on 4 May 1859 and closed in 1964. A small village known as Grampound Road grew ...
, Cornwall, England in 1906.
[
]
Works
*''A Grammar of the Pukhto, Pushto or Language of the Afghans'' (1855; 2nd edition 1860; 3rd edition, 1867)
*''Thesaurus of English and Hindūstānī Technical Terms'' (1859)
*''A Dictionary of the Puk'hto, Pushto, or Language of the Afghans'' (1860; 2nd edition, 1867)
*''Selections from the Poetry of the Afghāns, from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century'' (1862)
*''The Gulshan-i-roh : being selections, prose and poetical, in the Pus'hto, or Afghān language'' (1867)
*''The Fables of Aesop al-Hakīm'' (1871)
*''A Pushto Manual'' (1880)
*''The Tabakat-i-Nasiri of Minhaj-i-Saraj, Abu-Umar-i-Usman: A general history of the Muhammadan dynasties of Asia, including Hindustan from A. H. 194 (810 A. D.) to A. H. 658 (1260 A. D.), and the irruption of the infidel Mughals into Islam'' (1881) (translation from the Persian)
*'' Notes on Afghanistan and part of Baluchistan'' (1881–1888, Pakistani edition 1978)
References
*''Concise Dictionary of National Biography''
*''Sindh jo Mehran'' (in Sindhi language), published by the Sindhi Language Authority, Hyderabad, Sindh.
Notes
External links
Selections from the Poetry of the Afghāns, from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century, 1869
(full text)
A dictionary of the Puk'hto, Pus'hto, or language of the Afghans: with remarks on the originality of the language, and its affinity to other oriental tongues. Second edition, with considerable additions. London: Williams and Norgate, 1867
(as digital dictionary).
1825 births
1906 deaths
British Indian Army officers
People from Falmouth, Cornwall
Non-fiction writers from Cornwall
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