Arthur Venis

Arthur Venis (4 October 1857 – 5 June 1918)[1] CIE was a British educator and Sanskrit scholar.[2] He was also a Member of the Legislative Council of the United Province.

Life

He was the second son of Edward John Lazarus M.D. of Calcutta and Benares; his younger brother Maurice Dyte Venis was admitted to Clare College, Cambridge in 1883.[3][4] His father was a Sanskritist, a convert to Christianity from a Jewish background. He worked in Dacca as a "native doctor", later becoming a surgeon and moving to Benares.[5] An entry in the Middle Temple register for Maurice Dyte Venis indicates that by 1884 his father used the name Edward John Lazarus Venis.[6] On the other hand, Arthur's graduation at Balliol was as "Lazarus, A. V.".[7]

Arthur Venis studied at the University of Edinburgh.[1] He matriculated as a non-collegiate student at the University of Oxford in 1874, graduating B.A. in Balliol College, Oxford in 1878, and M.A. in 1885.[3]

Venis joined the Indian Educational Service in 1881,[1] and started his teaching career as Professor of English, Queen's College, Varanasi. In 1885 he was appointed as the principal of Government Sanskrit College, Varanasi.[8]

In 1888, Venis became Principal of Queen's College, and in 1897, he received a Boden Scholarship. He also taught post-Vedic Sanskrit at Allahabad University.[9][1]

Venis received the CIE in the 1911 Delhi Durbar Honours[9] and was a Member of the Legislative Council of the United Province.[10]

Works

Venis became a fellow of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.[1] Arthur Anthony Macdonell in 1906 described him as "chiefly interested in the traditional side of Indian philosophy".[11] Herbert Niel Randle in a 1926 book review described his work as "in some sense more important to the understanding of Indian logic than that done by any contemporary", because of the emphasis he put on the editing of Nyāya texts.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Venis, Arthur". Who's Who. A & C Black. Retrieved 19 February 2021. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ "Venis, Arthur – Persons of Indian Studies by Prof. Dr. Klaus Karttunen".
  3. ^ a b Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Venis, Arthur" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
  4. ^ "Venis, Maurice Dyte (VNS883MD)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  5. ^ Mukharji, Projit Bihari (2011). Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine. Anthem Press. p. 261 note 16 and 60. ISBN 978-0-85728-935-3.
  6. ^ Middle Temple (1949). 1782 to 1809. Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. p. 642.
  7. ^ Oxford, University of (1894). Oxford Honours, 1220-1894: Being an Alphabetical Register of Distinctions Conferred by the University of Oxford from the Earliest Times. Clarendon Press. p. 257.
  8. ^ Gaurinath Bhattacharyya Shastri, Gaurīnātha Śāstrī (1987). A Concise History of Classical Sanskrit Literature. ISBN 9788120800274. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
  9. ^ a b Rao, C. Hayavadana (ed.). "Venis, Arthur" . The Indian Biographical Dictionary . Madras: Pillar & Co.
  10. ^ Sidney Webb (18 June 1992). The Webbs in Asia: The 1911–12 Travel Diary. ISBN 9781349123285. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
  11. ^ MacDonell, A. A. (1906). "The Study of Sanskrit as an Imperial Question". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: 686. ISSN 0035-869X. JSTOR 25210300.
  12. ^ Randle, H. N. (1926). "Review of History of Indian Logic (Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern Schools)". Mind. 35 (137): 85. ISSN 0026-4423. JSTOR 2249396.