German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion. He wrote both scholarly and popular works on the subject of Indology, and the Sacred Books of the East. He also put forward and promoted the idea of a Turanian family of languages and Turanian people. He was the son of the Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller, whose verse Franz Schubert had set to music in his song-cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Max Müller's mother, Adelheide Müller, was the eldest daughter of a chief minister of Anhalt-Dessau. He knew Felix Mendelssohn and had Carl Maria von Weber as a godfather. He entered Leipzig University, where he left his early interest in music and poetry in favour of philosophy. Müller received his Ph.D. in 1843 for a dissertation on Spinoza's Ethics. He also displayed an aptitude for languages, learning the Classical languages Greek and Latin, as well as Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. In 1844 he went to Berlin to study with Friedrich Schelling. He began to translate the Upanishads for Schelling, and continued to research Sanskrit under Franz Bopp, the first systematic scholar of the Indo-European languages. In 1845, he moved to Paris to study Sanskrit under Eugène Burnouf. It was Burnouf who encouraged him to publish the complete Rig Veda in Sanskrit, using manuscripts available in England. He became a member of Christ Church, Oxford in 1851, when he gave his first series of lectures on comparative philology.
German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion. He wrote both scholarly and popular works on the subject of Indology, and the Sacred Books of the East. He also put forward and promoted the idea of a Turanian family of languages and Turanian people. He was the son of the Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller, whose verse Franz Schubert had set to music in his song-cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Max Müller's mother, Adelheide Müller, was the eldest daughter of a chief minister of Anhalt-Dessau. He knew Felix Mendelssohn and had Carl Maria von Weber as a godfather. He entered Leipzig University, where he left his early interest in music and poetry in favour of philosophy. Müller received his Ph.D. in 1843 for a dissertation on Spinoza's Ethics. He also displayed an aptitude for languages, learning the Classical languages Greek and Latin, as well as Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. In 1844 he went to Berlin to study with Friedrich Schelling. He began to translate the Upanishads for Schelling, and continued to research Sanskrit under Franz Bopp, the first systematic scholar of the Indo-European languages. In 1845, he moved to Paris to study Sanskrit under Eugène Burnouf. It was Burnouf who encouraged him to publish the complete Rig Veda in Sanskrit, using manuscripts available in England. He became a member of Christ Church, Oxford in 1851, when he gave his first series of lectures on comparative philology.
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