Foster 975

Friedrich August Rosen (1805-37), an undraped bust. c.1837.

Facsimile after the marble in the British Museum. Height 55 cm.

Presented by the Trustees of the British Museum.

Rosen was born in Hanover, and studied at Gottingen and Leipzig, where he abandoned law in favour of oriental studies. He pursued his studies at Berlin under Bopp, and at a very early age published two useful books on Sanskrit verbal roots (‘Corporis radicum sanscritarum prolusio,’ Berlin 1826, and ‘Radices Sanscritae’, Berlin 1827). In 1827 he removed to Paris to study Semitic languages, and then to London in 1828, to fill the first chair of oriental languages at the newly founded University College. Finding the elementary teaching uncongenial, he resigned in 1830, to pursue his work on publishing an edition of the Rigveda with Latin translation, of which the first volume appeared in 1838 after his death. He also was engaged in cataloguing the Syriac and Carshuni manuscripts in the British Museum, published as the first part of the ‘Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium’, and the Sanskrit manuscripts in the collection of Sir Robert Chambers, which were both published posthumously in 1838. His health undermined, he died in 1837 and was buried in Kensal Green.