Thomas Burrow (; 29 June 1909 – 8 June 1986) was an

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 ...

and the

Boden Professor of Sanskrit The position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford was established in 1832 with money bequeathed to the university by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Boden, a retired soldier in the service of the East India Company. He wished th ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

from 1944 to 1976; he was also a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world. With a governing body of a master and aro ...

during this time. His work includes ''A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary'', ''The Problem of Shwa in Sanskrit'' and ''The Sanskrit Language''.

Early life

Burrow was born in Leck in North

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, and was the eldest of the six children of Joshua and Frances Eleanor Burrow. He attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Kirkby Lonsdale, and won a scholarship to Christ's College,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. Here he became interested in Sanskrit as a result of specialising in comparative philology.

Professional life

Burrow is best known for his thirty-two year tenure as

at the Oriental Institute of the University of Oxford (1944–1976). During this time he conducted research and taught several generations of Sanskrit students. His professional colleagues during this time included especially

Richard Gombrich Richard Francis Gombrich (; born 17 July 1937) is a British Indologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli, and Buddhist studies. He was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1976 to 2004. He is currently Founder-Preside ...

, Lecturer in Sanskrit from 1965, who would succeed him in the Boden Chair. During the War years, 1937–1944, before his appointment at Oxford, Burrow was Assistant Keeper at the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, and also held an appointment at

SOAS The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

from 1938 to 1948. In these years he especially worked on the grammar and literature of the Niya Prakrit documents from Central Asia preserved in the

Kharoṣṭhī Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara, Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara along ...

script. Also during the War, Burrow also developed a deep interest in Dravidian languages and linguistics, and during fieldwork in South India in the 1950s and 1960s, he documented two languages previously unknown to scholarship ( Parji and Pengo). He tackled the problem of identifying Dravidian loanwords in Sanskrit while at Annamalai University under P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri and published the ''Collected papers on Dravidian linguistics'' in 1968. With his American colleague Murray B. Emeneau, Burrow published a milestone study, ''A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary'' (1966). After Burrow retired, his focus for the last years of his life was to produce an expanded second edition of this work, which he achieved in 1984. The above accounts are based on the informative obituary of Burrow published in 1987.

Personal life

In 1941, Burrow married Inez Mary Haley, who died in 1976. There were no children of the marriage. An intensely private man, Burrow was rumoured to be excellent at darts and to enjoy draft beers at his local pub in Kidlington, where apparently other pub-goers did not know that he was a professor.

Principal publications

A Translation of the Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Chinese Turkestan
James G. Forlong Fund, vol. XX. London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1940. * (3rd edition, 1973; reprint Motilal Banarsidass Publ., Delhi 2001) *''A comparative vocabulary of the Gondi dialects'', Asiatic Society (1960) * with M. B. Emeneau, ''A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary'', Clarendon Press (1966) **''A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary: Supplement'', Clarendon Press (1968) *

References

External links

A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary
2nd ed., 1984 1909 births 1986 deaths English Indologists Linguists from England Dravidologists People from the City of Lancaster Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge Boden Professors of Sanskrit Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford Employees of the British Museum {{UK-linguist-stub