Dimitrios Galanos

Who was Dimitrios Galanos?

Dimitrios Galanos was the earliest recorded Greek Indologist. His translations of Sanskrit texts into Greek made knowledge of the philosophical and religious ideas of India available to many Europeans.

Born in Athens, Ottoman Empire in 1760, he spent 47 years in India, where he translated many Hindu sacred texts into Greek and compiled a Sankrit-English-Greek dictionary of over 9000 words. He died on May 3, 1833 in Varanasi, India. He was buried in the Catholic cemetery there, and his tombstone is inscribed with the epitaph, "ΕΙΣ ΜΝΗΜΗΝ ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙOΥ ΓΑΛΑΝΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΑΘΗΝΑIOΥ". Munshi Sital Singh wrote these verses in Hindustani, which he affixed above the tomb: "Woe, a hundred times! Dimitrios Galanos departed from this world to the eternal monads. Woe me! Weeping and wailing have I said it. I am out of myself. Ah, he has gone away, the Plato of this century. Preceded by a short remembrance in Persian, the following Greek dirge was also added by Ananias, curate to the Patriarch of Sinai: "Demetrios Galanos, the Athenian from Greece, died in the Indies. He was a friend of the Muses and a man of learning. He shone brightly in fame and vocation.