thumb|Christian Lassen<br> drawing by [[Adolf Hohneck, 1859 ]]

Christian Lassen (22 October 1800 – 8 May 1876) was a Norwegian-born, German orientalist and Indologist. He was a professor of Old Indian language and literature at the University of Bonn.

Biography

Lassen was born at Bergen, Norway where he attended Bergen Cathedral School. Having received an education at the University of Oslo, he moved to Germany and continued his studies at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Bonn where Lassen acquired a sound knowledge of Sanskrit. He spent three years in Paris and London, engaged in copying and collating manuscripts, and collecting materials for future research, especially with reference to Hindu drama and philosophy. During this period he published, jointly with Eugène Burnouf, his first work, Essai sur le Pâli (Paris, 1826).

As well as the study of Indian languages, he was a scientific pioneer in other fields of philological inquiry. In his Beiträge zur Deutung der Eugubinischen Tafeln (1833) he prepared the way for the correct interpretation of the Umbrian inscriptions; and the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (7 vols., 1837–1850), started and largely conducted by him, contains, among other valuable papers from his pen, grammatical sketches of the Beluchi and Brahui languages, and an essay on the Lycian inscriptions. thereby anticipating, by one month, Burnouf's Mémoire on the same subject, while Sir Henry Rawlinson's famous memoir on the Behistun Inscription, though drawn up in Persia, at about the same time, did not reach the Royal Asiatic Society until three years later, 1839.

Subsequently, Lassen published, in the sixth volume of his journal (1845), a collection of all the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions known up to that date. According to Sayce:

Brahmi script

The first successful attempts at deciphering the Brahmi script were made in 1836 by Christian Lassen, who used a bilingual Greek-Brahmi coin of Indo-Greek king Agathocles to correctly identify several Brahmi letters. The task was then completed by James Prinsep, who was able to identify the rest of the Brahmi characters, with the help of Major Cunningham.

File:Agathukleyasa Agathokles.jpg|Identical regnal names Agathuklayesa (Brahmi: 𑀅𑀕𑀣𑀼𑀼𑀓𑁆𑀮𑁂𑀬𑁂𑀲) and Agathokles (Greek: ΑΓΑΘΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ) on a bilingual coin of Agathocles, used by Christian Lassen to decipher securely the first Brahmi letters. In this, he closely followed the pioneering work of James Prinsep (1835), and Carl Ludwig Grotefend (1836).

He contemplated bringing out a critical edition of the Vendidad; but, after publishing the first five fargards (1852), he felt that his whole energies were required for the successful accomplishment of the great undertaking of his life—his Indische Altertumskunde. In this work—completed in four volumes, published respectively in 1847 (2nd ed., 1867), 1849 (2nd ed., 1874), 1858 and 1861—which forms one of the greatest monuments of untiring industry and critical scholarship, everything that could be gathered from native and foreign sources, relative to the political, social and intellectual development of India. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1868.

References

Other sources

  • “Christian Lassen,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Band 17, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1883, S. 784–788.
  • “Christian Lassen,” Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4. Auflage von 1888–1890.