Max Müller

German-born British philologist, orientalist and indologist (1823–1900)

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Lived 1823–1900, aged 77Germany

Germany AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
51 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1823–1900
Aged 77
Awards
8
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-08-20

He gave the English-speaking world its first systematic access to the sacred texts of the East, editing all fifty volumes of a translation series that opened Hindu, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian scripture to modern scholarship. A philologist who built bridges and started fires.

Biography

About

Friedrich Max Müller was born in Germany on 6 December 1823 and became a British comparative philologist and Orientalist who founded the Western academic study of Indology and religious studies. Early in his career at Oxford—where he became professor first of modern languages, then of comparative philology in a chair created for him—he believed India needed Christian transformation, but his view grew more nuanced as he championed ancient Sanskrit literature. He directed the Sacred Books of the East, a fifty-volume English translation project that outlasted him, and spent decades embroiled in c…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Max Müller

Max Müller

said1872

He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions.

— Preface (Scribner edition, 1872)

Max Müller

saidDec 1868

India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education.

— Writing to the Duke of Argyll (December 1868), as quoted in Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas (1994) by Arun Shourie

Max Müller

saidDec 1866

The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country.

— Letter to his wife Georgina (December 1866), published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by

Max Müller

said1866

Languages seemed to float about like islands on the ocean of human speech; they did not shoot together to form themselves into larger continents . . .

— (1866: 153–4) quoted in Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history.

Max Müller

said1860

History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fullness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity.

— History of Ancient Sanksrit Literature (1860)

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