Hinduism - Who Was Arthur Avalon?



Arthur Avalon was Sir John Woodroffe's pen name. 


Sir John George Woodroffe (15 December 1865 – 16 January 1936), sometimes known as Arthur Avalon, was a British Orientalist whose vast and complicated published works on the Tantras and other Hindu traditions sparked a broad interest in Hindu philosophy and yoga. 


  • He studied Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy in addition to his judicial responsibilities, and he was particularly interested in Hindu Tantra. 
  • He translated twenty original Sanskrit works and published and spoke extensively on Indian philosophy and a broad variety of Yoga and Tantra subjects under the alias Arthur Avalon. 
  • "By editing the original Sanskrit scriptures, as well as by writing articles on the various elements of Shaktism, he demonstrated that the religion and worship had a deep philosophy behind it, and that the method of devotion it advises was nothing illogical or obscurantist," T.M.P. Mahadevan wrote. 

James Tisdall Woodroffe and his wife Florence, a daughter of James Hume, had a son named Woodroffe. 


  • James Woodroffe was a Justice of the Peace, and a Knight of St. Gregory.
  • He was the Advocate-General of Bengal and a Legal Member of the Government of India. 
  • John received his education at Woburn Park School and University College, Oxford, where he studied jurisprudence and passed the Bachelor of Civil Law exams. 

  • In 1889, he was admitted to the Inner Temple and registered as an advocate of the Calcutta High Court the following year. 
    • He was shortly named Tagore Law Professor and became a Fellow of Calcutta University.
 
  • In a widely used textbook, Civil Procedure in British India, he worked with Ameer Ali. 
  • In 1902, he was appointed as the Government of India's Standing Counsel, and in 1904, he was promoted to the High Court Bench. 
  • He became Chief Justice in 1915 after eighteen years on the bench. 

  • After retiring to England, he worked at the University of Oxford as a Reader in Indian Law. 
  • He died in France on January 18, 1936.


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