Harinath De

Harinath De (1877-1911) was an Indian linguist, polyglot and Indologist who, in a short life, was said to have learned thirty-four languages and held master's degrees in fourteen of them, including Chinese, Tibetan, Pali, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Greek and Latin. He taught at Dhaka University and Presidency College in Kolkata and in 1907 became the first lecturer of the newly created department of linguistics at Calcutta University, the same year he was appointed the first Indian librarian of the Imperial Library, now the National Library of India. His scholarly output included translations, editions and original research on Sanskrit texts, Persian lexicography and Arabic grammar, and his personal collection of eighty-eight volumes is preserved at the National Library of India.