Lucian Scherman

Lucian Scherman (born October 10, 1864 in Posen, died May 29, 1946 in Hanson, Massachusetts) was a German Indologist, curator of the Ethnology Museum in Munich, and also a professor at the University there.

Studies and Academic Work

Scherman was the son of merchants and landowners in Posen. After attending high school in Breslau and Posen, in 1882 he took up the study of Sanskrit at the University of Breslau with Adolf Friedrich Stenzler. In 1883 he relocated to Munich, where he continued his studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Scherman received his doctorate in the summer of 1885. His dissertation was entitled Eine eingehende Erörterung der philosophischen Hymnen aus der Rig- und Atharva-Veda-Sanhitâ sowohl an sich als auch im Verhältnis zur Philosophie der älteren Upanishad's. The dissertation was, coincidentally, the answer to a prize question that his instructor, Ernst Kuhn, had put to the faculty. It was announced that Scherman would win the prize for his dissertation.

From October 1910 to December 1911, Scherman and his wife Christine undertook an extended research trip to Ceylon (today Sri Lanka), Burma (today Myanmar), and India (today India and Pakistan). Scherman's eminence both in Germany and abroad was so considerable that a special Department of Asian Ethnology with an emphasis on Indian Culture was created specifically for him.