Frederick William Thomas (21 March 1867 – 6 May 1956), usually cited as F. W. Thomas, was an English Indologist and Tibetologist.

Life

Thomas was born on 21 March 1867 in

Tamworth, Staffordshire Tamworth (, ) is a market town and borough in Staffordshire, England, north-east of Birmingham. The town borders North Warwickshire to the east and north, Lichfield to the north, south-west and west. The town takes its name from the River T ...

. After schooling at

King Edward's School, Birmingham King Edward's School (KES) is an independent day school for boys in the British public school tradition, located in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, it is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Bir ...

, he went up to

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

in 1885, graduating with a first class degree in both classics and Indian languages and being awarded a Browne medal in both 1888 and 1889. At Cambridge he studied Sanskrit under the influential Orientalist

Edward Byles Cowell Edward Byles Cowell, (23 January 1826 – 9 February 1903) was a noted translator of Persian poetry and the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University. Cowell was born in Ipswich, the son of Charles Cowell and Marianne Byles. Elizabet ...

. He was a librarian at the India Office Library (now subsumed into 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 ...

) between 1898 and 1927. Simultaneously he was lecturer in

comparative philology Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...

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 1908 to 1935,

Reader A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to: Computing and technology * Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader * Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application * A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...

in Tibetan at London University from 1909 to 1937 and the

Boden Professor of Sanskrit The position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford was established in 1832 with money bequeathed to the university by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Boden, a retired soldier in the service of the East India Company. He wished th ...

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

between 1927 and 1937, in which capacity he became a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

. His students at Oxford included

Harold Walter Bailey Sir Harold Walter Bailey, (16 December 1899 – 11 January 1996), who published as H. W. Bailey, was an English scholar of Khotanese, Sanskrit, and the comparative study of Iranian languages. Life Bailey was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, and rai ...

. Thomas became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1927. He died on 6 May 1956.British Academy Fellowship record
Accessed 30 September 2015

Work

Thomas collaborated with Jacques Bacot in publishing a collection of Old Tibetan historical texts. In addition he studied many Old Tibetan texts himself which were collected in his four-volume ''Tibetan literary texts and documents concerning Chinese Turkestan'' and ''Ancient folk-literature from North-Eastern Tibet''. He also published a monograph on the

Nam language Nam is an unclassified extinct language preserved in Tibetan transcriptions in a number of Dunhuang manuscript fragments. The manuscript fragments are held at the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Classification Accordin ...

, and wrote an unpublished work on the

Zhangzhung language Zhang-Zhung () is an extinct Sino-Tibetan language that was spoken in what is now western Tibet. It is attested in a bilingual text called ''A Cavern of Treasures'' (''mDzod phug'') and several shorter texts. A small number of documents preserve ...

. His catalogues of the Tibetan manuscripts from Central Asia brought to the India Office Library by

Marc Aurel Stein Sir Marc Aurel Stein, ( hu, Stein Márk Aurél; 26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943) was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, primarily known for his explorations and archaeological discoveries in Central Asia. He was also a professor at ...

remained unpublished until 2007, when his catalogue of Tibetan manuscripts from Stein's third expedition was published on the website of the

International Dunhuang Project The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) is an international collaborative effort to conserve, catalogue and digitise manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from the Mogao caves at the Western Chinese city of Dunhuang and v ...

Publications

*(1897) (with E.B. Cowell) ''The Harsa-carita of Bana.'' London: Royal Asiatic Society. *(1903) ''Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS.'' *(1929) (with Sten Konow) ''Two medieval documents from Tun-Huang.'' Oslo, A.W. Brøggers boktrykkeri. *(1933) ''Arthur Anthony Macdonell, 1854-1930.'' London: Milford. *(1935-1963) ''Tibetan literary texts and documents concerning Chinese Turkestan.'' vols.London: Royal Asiatic Society. *(1940-1946) (with Jacques Bacot and Gustave-Charles Toussaint) ''Documents de Touen-houang relatifs à l'histoire du Tibet.'' Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner. *(1948) '' Nam, an ancient language of the Sino-Tibetan borderland''. London, Oxford Univ. Press. *(1957) ''Ancient folk-literature from North-Eastern Tibet.'' Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. *(2007) ''Stein Tibetan: Third Expedition'
http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_cat.a4d?shortref=Thomas_2007

References

External links

*
Obituary
''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, F.W. Tibetologists English orientalists 1867 births 1956 deaths Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford Boden Professors of Sanskrit People educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of University College London Fellows of the British Academy People from Tamworth, Staffordshire Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire