Arthur Llewellyn Basham
Arthur Llewellyn Basham Indologist | |
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Arthur Llewellyn Basham
Early life
Arthur Llewellyn Basham was born on 24 May 1914, in Loughton, Essex, the son of Abraham Arthur Edward Basham and Maria Jane Basham née Thompson.[1] Although an only child, he grew up in Essex with his adopted sister, who was in fact his cousin on his father's side. His father had been a journalist who served in the Indian Army at Kasauli, near Simla during World War I, and it was the stories that his father told him about India that first introduced him to the culture of the country to which he would devote his professional career.[2] His mother was also a journalist and short story writer further instilling a love of language and literature. As a child, he was also introduced to music and learnt to play the piano to a high standard, writing a number of his own compositions by the age of sixteen.
Basham developed a keen interest in religion which began with the
Career
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After the war he returned to
A reminiscence contributed by an unidentified URL in 2014 states :As an undergrad at ANU in the 1970s I well remember attending his Asian Civilizations lectures in the HC Coombs lecture theatre. One morning in 1974 we noticed that an upright piano had been left from a performance the previous evening. Upon arrival for his lecture, Prof Basham calmly strolled over to the piano, sat down and played the most beautiful Chopin for five minutes or so. A standing ovation from his students followed. I can still see him striding across the campus, pipe-in-mouth, forty years later.
After retiring from ANU in 1979, Basham accepted a series of one year visiting professorships with various universities. Basham was one of the first western historians to critically gauge the impact of
Books
Possibly his most popular book is
Basham also wrote History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, based on his PhD work done under L. D. Barnett. Several of his key papers on Hinduism were edited as the book The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism by Kenneth G. Zysk. A book about Basham, written by Sachindra Kumar Maity (published 1997, Abhinav Publications,
Bibliography
- Books
- The History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: a Vanished Indian Religion, London, 1951, ISBN 9788120812048
- ISBN 9780330439091
- Papers on the Date of Kaniṣka, Leiden, 1968, ISBN 9789004001510
- A Cultural History of India (editor), Oxford, 1975, ISBN 978-0195639216
He also revised Vincent Arthur Smith's Oxford History of India with Mortimer Wheeler in 1958.[5]
- Papers
- Basham, A. L. (October 1948). "Harṣa of Kashmir and the Iconoclast Ascetics". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 12 (3–4): 140–145. .
- Basham, A. L. (February 1949). "Recent Work on the Indus Civilization". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 13 (1): 140–145. .
- Basham, A.L. (1953). "A New Study of the Śaka-Kuṣāṇa Period". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 15 (1): 80–97. JSTOR 608886.
- Basham, A.L. (February 1957). "The Succession of the Line of Kaniṣka". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 20: 77–88. .
- Basham, A. L. (1981) "The Evolution of the Concept of Bodhisattva" in The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhism,OCLC 781433516
References
- ^ Diane Langmore, Darryl Benne, Australian Dictionary of Biography: Volume 17 1981–1990 A-K, Volume 17, p71, The Miegunyah Press, 1 April 2009
- ^ Sachindra Kumar Maity, Professor A.L. Basham, My Guruji and Problems and Perspectives of Ancient Indian History and Culture, page 3, 1997, (Abhinav Publications: India)
- ^ a b Sachindra Kumar Maity, Professor A.L. Basham, My Guruji and Problems and Perspectives of Ancient Indian History and Culture, page 4, 1997, (Abhinav Publications: India)
- ^ "Our history". Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 17 April 2024.
- JSTOR 609067.
- OCLC 964358428.
External links
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