Maurice Bloomfield, Ph.D., LL.D. (February 23, 1855 – June 12, 1928) was an Austrian-born American philologist and Sanskrit scholar.

Biography

He was born Maurice Blumenfeld in Bielitz ( pl, Bielsko), in what was at that time Austrian Silesia (today it is in Poland) to Jewish parents. His sister was

Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler (July 16, 1863 – August 20, 1927) was an Austrian-born U.S. pianist. Biography Zeisler was born Fannie Blumenfeld on July 16, 1863, in Bielitz, Austrian Silesia, to Jewish parents. She emigrated to the United States ...

, and the linguist Leonard Bloomfield was his nephew. He married Rosa Zeisler in 1885, and had a son and a daughter; Rosa died in 1920. In 1921, he married Helen Scott. He went to the United States in 1867, and 10 years later graduated from

Furman University Furman University is a private liberal arts university in Greenville, South Carolina. Founded in 1826 and named for the clergyman Richard Furman, Furman University is the oldest private institution of higher learning in South Carolina. It became ...

Greenville, South Carolina Greenville (; locally ) is a city in and the seat of Greenville County, South Carolina, United States. With a population of 70,720 at the 2020 census, it is the sixth-largest city in the state. Greenville is located approximately halfway be ...

. He then studied Sanskrit at Yale, under

W. D. Whitney William Dwight Whitney (February 9, 1827June 7, 1894) was an American linguist, philologist, and lexicographer known for his work on Sanskrit grammar and Vedic philology as well as his influential view of language as a social institution. He was ...

, and at Johns Hopkins University. He was part of the second graduating class to earn the PhD from Johns Hopkins; his degree was conferred in 1879. He returned to Hopkins as associate professor in 1881 after a stay of two years in Berlin and Leipzig, and soon afterwards was promoted professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology. He was forced by ill health to retire in 1926 and was named Professor Emeritus in honor of his 45 years on the Hopkins faculty. After retirement he moved to San Francisco to be closer to his son, and he died there on June 13, 1928. In 1896 Princeton University bestowed the LL.D. degree upon him. His papers in the '' American Journal of Philology'' number a few in comparative linguistics, such as those on assimilation and adaptation in congeneric classes of words, and many valuable contributions to the interpretation of the Vedas, and he is best known as a student of the Vedas. He translated, for Max Müller's '' Sacred Books of the East'', the ''Hymns of the Atharva-Veda'' (1897); contributed to the Buhler-Kielhorn ''Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde'' the section ''The Atharva-Veda and the Gopatha Brahmana'' (1899); was first to edit the ''Kauika-Sutra'' (1890), and in 1907 published, in the ''

Harvard Oriental Series The ''Harvard Oriental Series'' is a book series founded in 1891 by Charles Rockwell Lanman and Henry Clarke Warren. Lanman served as its inaugural editor (1891-1934) for the first 37 volumes. Other editors of the series include Walter Eugene Clark ...

, A Vedic Concordance''. In 1905 he published ''Cerberus, the Dog of Hades'', a study in

comparative mythology Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics.Littleton, p. 32 Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. For example, scholars have used ...

. ''The Religion of the Veda'' appeared in 1908; ''Life and Stories of the Jaina Savior Parasvanatha'' and a work on the ''Rig Veda'' in 1916.

References

External links

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Dr. Maurice Bloomfield Noted Orientalist and Philologist Dead at 73
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloomfield, Maurice American non-fiction writers American people of Austrian-Jewish descent American people of Polish-Jewish descent American philologists Austrian Jews Austro-Hungarian emigrants to the United States Furman University alumni Jewish American writers Johns Hopkins University faculty People from Austrian Silesia People from Bielsko Princeton University alumni Silesian emigrants to the United States Silesian Jews Yale University alumni 1855 births 1928 deaths Linguistic Society of America presidents