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Article: Obituary: Professor Sir Harold Bailey
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- January 12, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1996 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Harold Bailey was an academic Titan who dominated international
philological research for over 60 years. At Cambridge University
where he completed his career as Professor Emeritus of Sanskrit he
extended our understanding of all the ancient Indo-Iranian language
groups and thus, indirectly, of the folklore, history and religions
of Central and South-Eastern Asia. In the opinion of some Cambridge
academics he was the greatest scholar of his college - Queens' -
since Erasmus.
The chief goal of his life-work was to direct his formidable
intellect and gift for mnemonic retention towards the task of
tracing the development of the one language (first attested in
Hittite records of about 2000 BC) ...