Cecil Bendall (1 July 1856 – 14 March 1906) was an English scholar, a professor of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

and later at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. Bendall was educated at the

City of London School , established = , closed = , type = Public school Boys' independent day school , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Alan Bird , chair_label = Chair of Governors , chair = Ian Seaton , founder = John Carpenter , speciali ...

and at the

, achieving

first-class honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...

in the Classical

Tripos At the University of Cambridge, a Tripos (, plural 'Triposes') is any of the examinations that qualify an undergraduate for a bachelor's degree or the courses taken by a student to prepare for these. For example, an undergraduate studying mathe ...

in 1879 and the Indian Languages Tripos in 1881. He was elected to a fellowship at

Gonville and Caius College Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of th ...

. From 1882 to 1893 he worked at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in the department of Oriental Manuscripts (now part of the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

). In 1894–1895 he was in Nepal and Northern India collecting oriental manuscripts for

. During the winter 1898–1899 he returned to Nepal and together with pandit

Hara Prasad Shastri Hara Prasad Shastri ( bn, হরপ্রসাদ শাস্ত্রী) (6 December 1853 – 17 November 1931), also known as Hara Prasad Bhattacharya, was an Indian academic, Sanskrit scholar, archivist and historian of Bengali literature ...

and his assistant pandit Binodavihari Bhattacharya from the

Asiatic Society The Asiatic Society is a government of India organisation founded during the Company rule in India to enhance and further the cause of "Oriental research", in this case, research into India and the surrounding regions. It was founded by the p ...

in Calcutta, the team registered and collected information from palm-leaf manuscripts in the Durbar Library belonging to Rana Prime Minister Bir Shumsher J. B. Rana, and here he found the famous historical document

Gopal Raj Vamshavali The Gopal Raj Vamshavali ( IAST: Gopālarājavaṃśāvalī, Devanagari: गोपालराजवंशावली) is a 14th-century hand-written manuscript of Nepal which is primarily a genealogical record of Nepalese monarchs. One of the ...

, describing Nepal's history from around 1000 to 1600. He was Professor of Sanskrit at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

from 1895 to 1902, and at Cambridge from 1903 until his death. He was a contributor to the '' Dictionary of National Biography''. He died in Liverpool in 1906 and is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.

References

* W. B. Owen, "Bendall, Cecil (1856–1906)", rev. R. S. Simpson, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 11 March 2013
* "BENDALL, Cecil", ''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2008; online ed., Oxford University Press, Dec 200
accessed 11 March 2013
* * * Cecil Bendall: ''A Journey of Literary and Archaeological Research in Nepal and Northern India during the winter 1884–5'', Cambridge University Press, 1886 - 154 sider *

. ''A Catalogue of Palm-Leaf and selected Paper Manuscripts belonging to the Durbar Library, Nepal'', Calcutta 1905—with historical introduction by Cecil Bendall (including a description of ''

'')

External links

* 1856 births 1906 deaths Academics of University College London British Sanskrit scholars Employees of the British Library Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Linguists from the United Kingdom {{UK-linguist-stub