Muir, John

Muir, John a famous Sanscrit scholar, was born at Glasgow in 1810. He studied at his native place, and in 1828 went to Bengal in the service of the East India Company, where he interested himself in the moral and religious welfare of the natives, and for this purpose published, among other works, in 1839, A Sketch of the Argument for Christianity against Hinduism, and Examination of Religions. In 1853 he returned to his native country. He died March 8, 1882, at Edinburgh. Muir's main work is Original Sanscrit Texts, on the Origin and History of the People of India, their Religion and Institutions (Lond. 1868-73, 5 volumes), which is indispensable for the student of ancient Hindu life and thought, dealing principally, as it does with the Vedic period of Indian literature. The first volume discusses the legendary accounts of the origin of the caste; the second, the primitive home of the Hindus; the third, the opinions, of Hindu writers on the Vedas; the fourth, the contrast between Vedic and later Hindu theology; and the fifth, the cosmological and mythological conceptions' of the Indians in the Vedic age. (B.P.)