Sten Konow.
Sten Konow (17 April 1867 – 29 June 1948) was a Norwegian
Indologist
Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies.
The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') is o ...
. He was professor of Indic philology at the
Christiania University
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
,
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
, from 1910, moving to
Hamburg University in 1914, where he was professor for Indian history and culture. He returned to Oslo as professor for Indian languages and history in 1919. He was a specialist on the Tibeto-Burmese languages.
![Sten_Konow](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Sten_Konow.jpg)
Konow was born in
Sør-Aurdal
Sør-Aurdal is a municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Valdres. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Bagn. Other villages in the municipality include Begna, Hedalen, a ...
in Oppland where his father Wollert Otto Konow (1833–95) was a parish priest married to Henrikka Christiane Johanne Molde Wolff (1841–1927). Konow studied art, graduating from Lillehammer in 1884. He then studied in Kristiania before movingt to Halle and worked in the Oslo University library for some time. In 1890 he collated a Norwegian lexicon. He returned to studies in Indian philology at the University of Halle under
Richard Pischel
Richard Pischel (18 January 1849 – 26 December 1908) was a German Indologist born in Breslau.
In 1870 he received his doctorate from the University of Breslau under the guidance of Adolf Friedrich Stenzler (1807-1887). His graduate thesis was ...
and received a doctorate in 1893 with studies on the Sāmavidhānabrāhmana. He worked in Berlin from 1894 to 1896 and returned to Kristiania and worked as a research fellow. In 1900 he was hired to work in the Linguistic Survey of India under
George Grierson
George Allison Grierson (April 11, 1867–October 18, 1931) was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1914 to 1922, and was a cabinet minister in the government of Tobias Norris. Grierso ...
. He continued to work for the survey from England and then from Norway. He translated
Rajasekhara Rajasekhara may refer to:
* Rama Rajasekhara/Cheraman Perumal "Nayanar" (''fl.'' 9th century), theologian, devotional poet and ruler from south India
* Rajashekhara (Sanskrit poet)
Rajashekhara (; ) was a Sanskrit poet, dramatist and critic. H ...
's ''Karpuramanjari'', which was published as volume 4 of the
Harvard Oriental Series in 1901. In 1906 he was appointed as a government epigraphist and travelled across India, taking part in excavations at Sarnath. He returned to Norway in 1908. He returned to become a professor at the University of Hamburg (1914-1919) and then at Oslo until he retired in 1937.
Konow married Anne Helene Schorcht née Heyerdahl (1869–1930) in 1904 and they had a daughter Agnes Helene who married Konow's student, the linguist
Georg Morgenstierne
Georg Valentin von Munthe af Morgenstierne (2 January 1892 – 3 March 1978) was a Norwegian professor of linguistics with the University of Oslo (UiO). He specialized in Indo-Iranian languages.
Studies
During the years 1923 to 1971, Morgens ...
. Along with Morgenstierne, he established that the "kaffir" languages of northern Afghanistan belonged to the Indo-Iranian language tree. Konow was a founding editor of the journal ''Acta Orientalia''.
References
External links
Bibliography at Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
{{DEFAULTSORT:Konow, Sten
University of Oslo faculty
Indologists
1867 births
1948 deaths