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Johann Ernest Hanxleden (b. at Ostercappeln, near Osnabrück, in Hanover, Germany, 1681; d. at Velur, in Trichur, Kerala, 20 March, 1732), known as
Arnos Paathiri in Kerala, was a Malayalam/Sanskrit poet, lexicographer, and philologist.
The Puththenpaana, a religious chant, is his most celebrated poem.
He was the first to construct a Malayalam dictionary. His lexicon describes Malayalam words in both Sanskrit and Portuguese (the then predominant European language in India).
Hanxleden and his predecessor, Heinrich Roth, were the pioneering European Sanskrit scholars. He was the first European to write a Sanskrit grammar (ca. 1725). He was also the first European to compose Sanskrit verse.
He died in Velur, the village where he had worked for over three decades, of a snake-bite.
References
- Joseph J. Palackal: Puthen paana: A Musical Study, Master's Thesis, Hunter College of the City University of New York, 1995. Christian Musicological Society of India (http://www.indussociety.org/cmsindia)
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