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Max Müller

Friedrich Max Müller ( December 6 is the 340th day (341st on leap years) of the year in the The Gregorian calendar is the calendar currently used in the Western world. A modification of the Julian calendar, it was first proposed by the Neapolitan doctor Aloysius Lilius, and was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII... December 6, Years: 1820 1821 1822 - 1823 - 1824 1825 1826 Decades: 1790s 1800s 1810s - 1820s - 1830s 1840s 1850s Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century 1823 in art 1823 in literature 1823 in science 1823 in music 1823 in sports List of state leaders in 1823 List of religious leaders in 1823... 1823 – October 28 is the 301st day of the year (302nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 64 days remaining. October Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20... October 28, For the film, see (Redirected from 1900 (film)) Movie poster for 1900 1900 (also called Novecento) is a 1976 epic film starring Robert de Niro, Gerard Depardieu, and Burt Lancaster, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The film chronicles the lives of two men during the political turmoils that took place in... 1900), more commonly known as Max Müller, was a The Federal Republic of Germany ( German (Deutsch) Spoken in: Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and 38 other countries. Region: Europe Total speakers: 120 million Ranking: 9 Genetic classification: Indo-European  Germanic   West Germanic    Old High German    Middle High German    Modern... German Orientalism is the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures, by Westerners. Initially it carried no negative freight. Like the term Orient itself it employs a Latin term Oriens referring simply to the rising of the sun, to imply the East in the most general sense. Unless one... Orientalist, one of the founders of Indian studies, who virtually created the discipline of Comparative religion is a field of religious study that analyzes interpretive differences of common themes and ideas among the worlds religions. This field of study relies upon the examination of myth, deriving essential themes from religious metaphor, and tracing in various ways a possible direct cultural connection between them... comparative religion. Müller wrote both scholarly and a popular works on this subject, a discipline he introduced to the British reading public.

Life and work

He was the son of the Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller, whose verse For the crater on the moon, see Schubert (crater) Franz Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828), was an Austrian composer. He wrote some six hundred romantic songs as well as many operas, symphonies, sonatas and many other works. Public appreciation of his work during his... Schubert had set to music in his song-cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Müller knew Felix Mendelssohn wrote his first symphony at the young age of fifteen. Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, always known simply as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German composer of the early Romantic period. He was perhaps the greatest child prodigy after Mozart. Contents // 1... Felix Mendelssohn and had This article needs cleanup. Please edit this article to conform to a higher standard of article quality. Carl Maria Friedrich Ernest von Weber (November 18, 1786 - June 5, German composer, born at Eutin, near Lübeck. He is best known for the operas Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, Oberon, King of... Carl Maria von Weber as a godfather, but at The University of Leipzig is one of the oldest universities in Europe. It was founded in the early 15th century and was originally comprised of four faculties. In DDR-times, it was called Karl-Marx-university (KMU). Today it has grown to 14 faculties and with over 29.000 students... Leipzig University he left his early interest in music for Sanskrit ( saṃskṛtam) Spoken in: Asia Region: India and some other areas of South Asia, parts of South East Asia Total speakers: 6,106 native (1981); 194,433 second language (1961) Ranking: Not in top 100 Genetic classification: Indo-European  Indo-Iranian   Indo-Aryan... Sanskrit, the classical language of ancient India. He published work in Sanskrit linguistics that students still read and use.

Müller went to England in 1846 and became a member of Christ Church Established 1546 Sister College Trinity College Dean The Very Revd Christopher Lewis Graduates 174 Undergraduates 426 Christ Church (in full: The Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry VIII) is one of the largest and wealthiest of the constituent colleges of the University... Christ Church, Oxford in 1851, when he gave his first series of lectures on comparative philology. He gained appointments as Taylorian Professor of Modern European Languages in 1854 and as Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford. Defeated in the 1860 competition for the tenured Chair of Sanskrit, he later became Oxford's first Professor of Comparative Theology (1868 – 1875). In his time, some circles considered his teaching of comparative religion as subversive of morality. According to Monsignor Munro, the Roman Catholic bishop of St. Andrews Cathedral in Glasgow, the lectures repesented nothing less than "a crusade against divine revelation, against Jesus Christ and Christianity". Muller attempted to reach a philosophy of religion that addressed the crisis of faith that was engendered by the historical and critical study of religion by German scholars on the one hand, and by the This article is about Darwinism as a philosophical concept; see evolution for the page on biological evolution; modern evolutionary synthesis for neo-Darwinism; and also evolution (disambiguation). Darwinism is a term used for various processes related to the ideas of Charles Darwin, particularly concerning evolution and natural selection. Darwinism in... Darwinian revolution on the other (compare Caricature from Punch, 1881: Admit that Homer sometimes nods, That poets do write trash, Our Bard has written Balder Dead, And also Balder-dash Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 - 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic, who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son... Matthew Arnold's " Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold, is one of the finest short poems of the 19th century, even one of most famous poems written in the English language. First published in 1867, in the collection, New Poems, its condensed 39 lines with a subtly interwoven and shifting rhyme have a memorable... Dover Beach"). He analyzed mythologies as rationalizations of natural phenomena, primitive beginnings that we might denominate " In the philosophy of science, a protoscience is any new area of scientific endeavor in the process of becoming established. Sometimes scientific skeptics refer to these endeavors as pathological sciences. Protoscience is a term sometimes used to describe a hypothesis which has not yet been tested adequately by the scientific... protoscience" within a cultural evolution; Muller's "Darwinian" concepts of the evolution of human cultures are among his least lasting achievements.

Müller shared many of the ideas associated with Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. It stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom within or even from classical notions of form in art, and overturning of previous social conventions, particularly the position of the aristocracy. It followed the Enlightenment period and was... Romanticism, which coloured his account of ancient religions, in particular his emphasis on the formative influence on early religion of emotional communion with natural forces.

Müller's Sanskrit studies came at a time when scholars had started to see language development in relation to cultural development. The recent discovery of the Indo-European Indo-European languages Anatolian | Indo-Iranian | Greek | Italic Celtic | Germanic | Armenian Balto-Slavic | Tocharian | Albanian Proto-Indo-European Language | Society | Religion Kurgan | Yamna | BMAC | Aryan Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. By extension, it became a collective... Indo-European (IE) language group had started to lead to much speculation about the relationship between This article describes the ancient classical period: for the classical period in music (second half of the 18th century): see Classical music era. Classical antiquity is a broad and perhaps misleading term for a long period of European history, that begins roughly with the earliest recorded Greek poetry of Homer... Greco-Roman cultures and those of more ancient peoples. In particular the Hindu texts Shruti Vedas Rig Veda Sama Veda Yajur Veda Atharva Veda Brahmanas Aranyakas Upanishads Smriti Itihasa Mahabharata Ramayana Puranas Tantras Sutras (list) Ashtavakra Gita Gita Govinda Hatha Yoga Pradipika Manu Smriti The Vedas are part of the Hindu Shruti; these religious scriptures form part of the core of the... Vedic culture of The Republic of India is the This is a list of countries by population. The data are generally a projection for July 2005 made by the US Census Bureau, unless specified. Rank Country Population — World 6,445,398,968 1 China 1,306,313,812 2 India 1,080... India was thought to have been the ancestor of European Classical cultures, and scholars sought to compare the genetically related European and Asian languages in order to reconstruct the earliest form of the root-language. The Vedic language, Sanskrit ( saṃskṛtam) Spoken in: Asia Region: India and some other areas of South Asia, parts of South East Asia Total speakers: 6,106 native (1981); 194,433 second language (1961) Ranking: Not in top 100 Genetic classification: Indo-European  Indo-Iranian   Indo-Aryan... Sanskrit, was thought to be the oldest of the IE languages. Müller therefore devoted himself to the study of this language, becoming one of the major Sanskrit scholars of his day. Müller believed that the earliest documents of Vedic culture should be studied in order to provide the key to the development of Paganism is a catch-all term which has come to bundle together (by extension from its original classical meaning of a pre-Christian religion) a very broad set of not necessarily compatible religious beliefs and practices that are usually, but not necessarily, characterized by polytheism and, less commonly, animism. Contents... pagan European religions, and of religious belief in general. To this end Müller sought to understand the most ancient of Vedic scriptures, the Hindu texts Shruti Vedas Rig Veda Sama Veda Yajur Veda Atharva Veda Brahmanas Aranyakas Upanishads Smriti Itihasa Mahabharata Ramayana Puranas Tantras Sutras (list) Ashtavakra Gita Gita Govinda Hatha Yoga Pradipika Manu Smriti The Rig Veda ऋग्वेद (Sanskrit ṛc praise + veda knowledge) is the earliest... Rig-Veda.

For Müller, however, the study of the language had to relate to the study of the culture in which it had been used. He came to the view that the development of languages should be tied to that of belief-systems. At that time the Vedic scriptures were little-known in the West is most commonly a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. West is the direction towards which the sun sets at the equinox. It is one of the four cardinal points of the compass, upon which it is considered the opposite of East, and at right angles to... West, though there was increasing interest in the philosophy of the Hindu texts Shruti Vedas Rig Veda Sama Veda Yajur Veda Atharva Veda Brahmanas Aranyakas Upanishads Smriti Itihasa Mahabharata Ramayana Puranas Tantras Sutras (list) Ashtavakra Gita Gita Govinda Hatha Yoga Pradipika Manu Smriti The Upanishads (उपनिषद्, Upanişad) are part of the Hindu Shruti... Upanishads. Müller believed that the sophisticated Upanishadic philosophy could be linked to the more primitive Vedic paganism from which it evolved. He had to travel to For other uses, see London (disambiguation). London — containing the City of London — is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England and a major world city. With over seven million inhabitants (Londoners) in Greater London area, it is amongst the most densely populated areas in Western Europe... London in order to look at documents held in the collection of the The British East India Company, popularly known as John Company, was founded by a Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I on December 31, 1600. Over the next 250 years, it became one of the most powerful commercial enterprises of its time. The British East India Companys business was centered... British East India Company. While there he persuaded the company to allow him to undertake a critical edition of the Rig-Veda, a task he pursued doggedly over many years (1849 - 1874), and which resulted in the critical edition for which he is most remembered.

He supported himself at first with creative writing, his novel German Love being popular in its day. Müller's connections with the East India Company and with Sanskritists based at Oxford University led to a career in Britain, where he eventually became the leading intellectual commentator on the culture of India, which Britain controlled as part of its Empire. This led to the development of links with Indian intellectuals, notably the leaders of the Brahmo Samaj is a social movement founded in This article is on Calcutta/Kolkata, the city. For the gambling term, see Indian state of West Bengal. Its original name was Kalikata and is, in higher literature, still referred to as such. Speakers of the regions native language of Bengali have... Brahmo Samaj, and to Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing, beliefs and to meld practices of various schools of thought. It is especially associated with the attempt to merge and analogize several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity. Syncretism is... syncretist attempts to unite Christian and Hindu traditions. Modern Indians have both praised and (largely) vilified these activities.

For Müller, the culture of the Vedic peoples represented a form of nature worship, an idea clearly influenced by Romanticism. He saw the gods of the Rig-Veda as active forces of nature, only partly personified as imagined The supernatural refers to conscious magical, religious or unknown forces that cannot ordinarily be perceived except through their effects. This word is often used interchangeably with preternatural or paranormal. Unlike natural forces, these putative supernatural forces can not be shown to exist by the scientific method. Supernatural claims assert phenomena... supernatural persons. From this claim Müller derived his theory that mythology is 'a disease of language'. By this he meant that myth transforms concepts into beings and stories. In Müller's view 'gods' began as words constructed in order to express abstract ideas, but were transformed into imagined personalities. Thus the Indo-European father-god appears under various names: Alternate meanings: See Zeus Web Server is a web server for UNIX platforms (including Linux) that has dominated web benchmarks (http://www.spec.org/benchmarks.html#web) over the last 10 years. It was developed by Zeus Technology (http://www.zeus.com/) a software company in Cambridge, England... Zeus, Topics in Roman mythology Important Gods: Jupiter Mars Quirinus Vesta Juno Diana Fortuna Minerva Mercury Vulcan Ceres Venus Lares Legendary History: Aeneas Romulus Numa Early Kings Roman religion The Flamens Greek/Roman myth compared In Roman mythology, Jupiter (sometimes shortened to Jove) held the same role as Zeus in the... Jupiter, In vedic religion, Dyaus Pita is the Sky Father, husband of Prthivi and father of Agni and Indra (RV 4.17.4). His origins can be traced to the Indo-European sky god *Dyeus, who is also reflected as Zeus in Greek mythology, Jupiter (from Latin Iove pater, father-god... Dyaus Pita. For Müller all these names can be traced to the word 'Dyaus', which he understands to imply 'shining' or 'radiance'. This leads to the terms 'deva', 'deus', 'theos' as generic terms for a god, and to the names 'Zeus' and 'Jupiter' (derived from deus-pater). In this way a metaphor becomes personified and ossified. This aspect of Müller's thinking close resembled the later ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900) was a highly influential German philosopher. Contents // 1 His Life 2 His Works and Ideas 2.1 The Will to Power 2.1.1 Similar ideas in others thought 2.1.2 Criticism of the idea 2.2... Nietzsche.

Nevertheless Müller's work contributed to the developing interest in Indo-European Indo-European languages Anatolian | Indo-Iranian | Greek | Italic Celtic | Germanic | Armenian Balto-Slavic | Tocharian | Albanian Proto-Indo-European Language | Society | Religion Kurgan | Yamna | BMAC | Aryan Indo-European studies The phrase Aryan race is sometimes used to translate Old Persian inscriptions and other Persian sources from c. 500 BC... Aryan culture which set Indo-European ('Aryan') traditions in opposition to Semitic is an adjective which in common parlance mistakenly refers specifically to Jewish things, while the term actually refers to things originating among speakers of Semitic languages or people descended from them, and in a linguistic context to the northeastern subfamily of Afro-Asiatic. In a linguistic context, it refers... Semitic religions. He was deeply saddened by the fact that these later came to be expressed in An African-American drinks out of a water fountain marked for colored in 1939 at a street car terminal in Oklahoma City. Racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human capacities, that a certain race is inherently superior or inferior to others, and/or that individuals... racist terms. This was far from Müller's own intention. For Müller the discovery of common Indian and European ancestry was a powerful argument against racism.

His wife, Georgina Adelaide (died 1916 is a Here is the calendar for any leap year starting on Saturday (dominical letter BA), e.g. 2000. January February March Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 1 2 3 4 5... 1916) had his papers and correspondence carefully bound; they are at the Entrance to the Library, with the coats-of-arms of several Oxford colleges Oxford University Libraries Service (OULS) comprises over 30 of the University of Oxfords central and faculty libraries: from the world famous Bodleian Library, established 400 years ago, to the modern digital library ventures. Contents // 1 History... Bodleian Library, Oxford [1] (http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/1500-1900/muller/maxmuller.html)

Quotations

"If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life...again I should point to India."

"The Upanishads are the ... sources of ... the Vedanta philosophy, a system in which human speculation seems to me to have reached its very acme." "I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood."

Max-Muller's opinions about Veda :- (1) "Large number of Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme ; tedious, low, commonplace." [Reference:'Chips from a German Workshop', second edition, 1866, p. 27.]

(2) "Nay, they (the Vedas) contain, by the side of simple, natural, childish thoughts, many ideas which to us sound modern, or secondary and tertiary." [Reference:'India, What can it teach us', Lecture IV, p. 118, 1882.]

References

• Lourens P. van den Bosch, Friedrich Max Müller: A Life Devoted to the Humanities, 2002. Recent biography sets him in the context of Victorian intellectual culture.

See also

• Categories: Stub | Philosophy | Indology ... Paul Deussen

External links

• Lourens P. van den Bosch,"Theosophy or Pantheism?: Friedrich Max Müller's Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion" (http://www.here-now4u.de/eng/theosophy_or_pantheism__friedr.htm): full text of the article
• Brief biography of F. Max Mueller (http://www.yrec.info/contentid-78.html)
• Vedas and Upanishads (http://san.beck.org/EC7-Vedas.html)