Albert Grünwedel

Albert Grünwedel (July 31, 1856 – October 28, 1935) was a German indologist, tibetologist, archaeologist, and explorer of Central Asia. He was one of the first scholars to study the Lepcha language.

Life

Grünwedel was born in Munich in 1856, the son of a painter. He studied art history and Asian languages, including Avestan, and in 1883 earned his doctorate at the University of Munich. In 1881 he began work as an assistant at the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin and in 1883 he was appointed deputy director of the ethnographic collection. Grünwedel won accolades for his numerous publications on Buddhist art, archaeology Central Asia, and Himalayan languages. Two notable works were Buddhist art in India (1893) and Mythology of Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia (1900), which concerned the Greek origins of the Gandharan Greco-Buddhist artistic style and its development in Central Asia.