Jan Hendrik Kern - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

JAN HENDRIK KERN (1833-), Dutch Orientalist, was born in Java of Dutch parents on the 6th of April 1833. He studied at Utrecht, Leiden and Berlin, where he was a pupil of the Sanskrit scholar, Albrecht Weber. After some years spent as professor of Greek at Maestricht, he became professor of Sanskrit at Benares in 1863, and in 1865 at Leiden. His studies included the Malay languages as well as Sanskrit. His chief work is Geschiedenis van het Buddhisme in Indic (Haarlem, 2 vols., 1881-1883); in English he wrote a translation (Oxford, 1884) of the Saddharma Pundarika and a Manual of Indian Buddhism (Strassburg, 1896) for Biihler Kielhorn's Grundriss der indoarischen Philologie.