Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot (21 May 1833 – 25 May 1901) was a notable

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Orientalist and

translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

Biography

Arbuthnot's early career was spent as a civil servant in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

; his last post was as Collector for the

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

government. He was named after his grandfather, Field Marshal Sir John FitzGerald. His first name is sometimes spelled "Foster". Arbuthnot was well versed in the ancient literature of India. He collaborated with his close friend

Sir Richard Burton Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...

in the translations of two

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 ...

erotic texts, the ''

Kama Sutra The ''Kama Sutra'' (; sa, कामसूत्र, , ; ) is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment in life. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the ''Kama Sutra'' is neither exclusively nor predominantly ...

of Vatsayana'' (1883) and ''The

Ananga Ranga The ''Ananga Ranga'' ( hi, अनंगरंग, lit=Stage of Love) or ''Kamaledhiplava'' ( hi, link=no, कमलेधिप्लव, lit=Boat in the Sea of Love) is an Indian sex manual written by Kalyana malla in the 15th or 16th century. T ...

'' (1885), both privately printed by the Kama Shastra Society (a fictitious organisation consisting of himself and Burton, a legal device to avoid obscenity laws).Ben Grant
"Translating/'The' “Kama Sutra”"
''Third World Quarterly'', Vol. 26, No. 3, Connecting Cultures (2005), 509-516 He also wrote the books ''Arabic Authors'', ''The Mysteries of Chronology'', ''Early Ideas'' (1881, under the pseudonym Anaryan) and ''Sex Mythology, Including an Account of the Masculine Cross '' (1898, privately printed), which attempts to trace the

phallic A phallus is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic. Any object that symbolically—or, more precisely ...

origins of religious symbols. He edited the ''

Rawżat aṣ-ṣafāʾ ''Rawżat aṣ-ṣafāʾ fī sīrat al-anbiyāʾ w-al-mulūk w-al-khulafāʾ'' (, ‘The Gardens of purity in the biography of the prophets and kings and caliphs’) or Rawdatu 's-safa is a Persian-language history of the origins of Islam, early I ...

'' (روضة الصفا, ‘garden of purity’) by

Mīr-Khvānd Muhammad ibn Khvandshah ibn Mahmud, more commonly known as Mirkhvand ( fa, میرخواند, also transliterated as Mirkhwand; 1433/34 – 1498), was a Persian historian active during the reign of the Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara (). He ...

, translated by the Orientalist Edward Rehatsek from 1891 to 1894. It is largely due to his work that several of the masterpieces of Arabic, Persian and Indian literature first became available in English translation.

Publications

Written

* * * * *

Translated

* *

Edited

* , ,
Part 2 Vol 2

References

* Mrs P S-M Arbuthnot ''Memories of the Arbuthnots'' (1920). George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

External links

* ** Arbuthnot, F.F
''Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and Literature''
(Full text) * * 1833 births 1901 deaths Arabic–English translators Persian–English translators Sanskrit–English translators English translators English non-fiction writers Foster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot English orientalists Indian Civil Service (British India) officers English male non-fiction writers 19th-century British translators 19th-century English male writers Younger sons of baronets {{UK-linguist-stub