Category Career Queries

On 50 BCE, Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (ancient France) and Britain was also conquered about a century later by the emperor Claudius. As a result, this large Celtic-speaking area was absorbed by Rome, Latin became the dominant language, and the Continental Celtic languages eventually died out. The chief Continental language was Gaulish.

The modern Romance languages developed from the spoken Latin of various parts of the Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times, Latin was the language most widely used in the West for scholarly and literary purposes. Until the latter part of the 20th century its use was required in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.

The oldest example of Latin extant, perhaps dating to the 7th century BCE, consists of a four-word inscription in Greek characters on a fibula, or cloak pin. It shows the preservation of full vowels in unstressed syllables—in contrast to the language in later times, which has reduced vowels. Early Latin had a stress accent on the first syllable of a word, in contrast to the Latin of the republican and imperial periods, in which the accent fell on either the next or second to the last syllable of a word.

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The translations of One Thousand and One Nights have been made into virtually every major language of the world. They began with the French translation by Antoine Galland (titled Les mille et une nuits, finished in 1717). Galland’s translation was essentially based on a medieval Arabic manuscript of Syrian origins, supplemented by oral tales recorded by him in Paris from a Maronite Arab from Aleppo named Hanna Diyab.

The first English translation appeared in 1706 and was made from Galland’s version; being anonymous, it is known as the Grub Street edition. It exists in two known copies kept in the Bodleian Library and in the Princeton University Library. Since then several English reissues appeared simultaneously in 1708. As early as the end of the 18th century the English translation based on Galland was brought to Halifax, Montreal, Philadelphia, New York and Sydney. Galland-based English translations were superseded by that made by Edward William Lane in 1839–41. In the 1880s an unexpurgated and complete English translation, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, was made by Richard Francis Burton.

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James Prinsep, (born August 20, 1799, County of Essex, England—died April 22, 1840, London), antiquary and colonial administrator in India, the first European scholar to decipher the edicts of the ancient Indian emperor Ashoka.

Prinsep was appointed to the Calcutta (Kolkata) mint in 1819 but left to become assay master (1820–30) at the Benares (Varanasi) mint. He returned to the Calcutta mint as assay master in 1832, leaving in 1838 for England because of ill health. As secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (from 1832), he had access to and developed the study of the largest collection of Indian coins then existing.

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Born into the aristocratic Dutt family in Calcutta, Torulata Dutta was the youngest of three siblings. Toru’s father Govin Chunder Dutt was a noted linguist and a poet, and her cousins and uncles were also accomplished in the literary field. “the Dutt Family Album”, published by Govin in 1870 in London, bears evidence of the family’s literacy prowess.

The family converted to Christianity shortly after Toru’s birth and moved to Europe three years later, when Toru’s brother died. Govin made sure both his daughters were well-educated. They studied at a school in Nice, France, spent time in Paris and Boulogne, Italy, and then moved to England in 1870. Here, they studied music and history.

The girls began to translate French poems into English from an early age and created a companionship through writing. The family moved back to Calcutta in 1873 due to the girls’ poor health. Here, the girls began to write more, finding ways to cope with the stifling atmosphere in Calcutta. Unfortunately, their partnership came to an end in 1874, when Toru’s sister Aru died at the age of 23.

Toru spent the next three years writing a lot of poetry and prose for “The Bengal Magazine” and “The Calcutta Review”. In 1877, at the age of 21, Toru died due to tuberculosis.

Toru’s only work to be published during her lifetime was “A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields”, a collection of English translations of French poetry. Toru left her first novel “Bianca” unfinished.

Excerpt

Toru was often called the Keats of Indo-English literature for the quality of her writing and meteoric rise to fame.

Sonnet

A sea of foliage girds our garden round,

But not a sea of dull unvaried green,

Sharp contrasts of all colors here are seen;

The light-green graceful tamarinds abound

Amid the mango clumps of green profound,

And palms arise, like pillars gray, between;

And o’er the quiet pools the seemuls lean,

Red – red, and startling like a trumpet’s sound.

But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges

Of bamboos to the eastward, when the moon

Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes

Into a cup of silver. One night swoon

Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze

On a primeval Eden, in amaze.

Did you know?

Toru loved the Indian epics “The Ramayana” and “The Mahabharatha”, and often read old Sanskrit classics to gain first-hand knowledge of those stories.

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Apart from the main mausoleum, which houses the tombs of Humayun and his wife Haji Behum, there are several tombs that can be found within the Humayun’s Tomb complex. One of the most prominent of these is the tomb and mosque of Isa Khan Niazi, an Afghan noble in Sher Shah Suri’s court of the Suri dynasty. This tomb predates the main one by nearly 20 years. Built during the reign of Islam Shah Suri, son of Sher Shah Suri, this octagonal tomb is placed within an octagonal garden. While it was built for Isa Khan, it later served as a burial place for his entire family.

Barber’s Tomb, also known as Nai-ka-Gumbad, is another popular tomb which lies close to the main mausoleum. The tomb, which dates to 1590-91 CE according to an inscription, is said to belong to Humayun’s royal barber. It stands on a raised platform and can be reached by climbing seven steps.

The Afsarwala tomb complex is another tomb found in the vicinity. The complex comprises a tomb and a mosque. The tomb is believed to belong to a military officer, thereby the name ‘Afsarwala’. The mosque, built between 1560 and 1567, stands on the same raised platform as the tomb.

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