Georg Bühler

Who was Georg Bühler?

Professor Johann Georg Bühler was a scholar of ancient Indian languages and law.

Bühler was born to Rev. Johann G. Bühler in Borstel, Hanover, attended high school in Hanover where he mastered Greek and Latin, then university as a student of theology and philosophy at Göttingen, where he studied classical philology, Sanskrit, Zend, Persian, Armenian, and Arabic. In 1858 he received his doctorate in eastern languages and archaeology; his thesis explored the suffix -tês in Greek grammar. That same year he went to Paris to study Sanskrit manuscripts, and in 1859 onwards to London where he remained until October 1862. This time was used mainly for the study of the Vedic manuscripts at the India Office and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. While in England, Bühler was first a private teacher and later assistant to the Queen's librarian in Windsor Castle.

In Fall 1862 Bühler was appointed assistant at the Göttingen library; he moved there in October. While settling in, he received an invitation via Prof. Max Müller to join the Benares Sanskrit College in India. Before this could be settled, he also received an offer of Professor of Oriental Languages at the Elphinstone College, Bombay. Bühler responded immediately and arrived on February 10, 1863 in Bombay. Noted Sanskrit and legal scholar Kashinath Trimbak Telang was then a student at the college. In the next year Bühler became a Fellow of Bombay University and member of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was to remain in India until 1880. During this time he collected a remarkable number of texts for the Indian government and the libraries of Berlin, Cambridge University, and Oxford University.