British linguist Ronald Eaton Asher, who translated several works from Malayalam and Tamil into English, passed away on December 26. He was 96.
Asher's son informed Malayalam writer P.P. Sreekumar through an email about his father's demise.
A recipient of Kerala Sahitya Akademi fellowship (the highest recognition it gives to a writer or scholar from abroad), Asher was born in Nottinghamshire, England in 1926. His deep love for languages led him to learn several of them, including Latin, French, German, Tamil, and Malayalam.
Asher had developed a keen interest in India in the 1940s and was a fan of Indian academic and politician V.K. Krishna Menon, who used to address students in various universities in London when Asher was a student.
Towards the end of his doctoral research in 1953, he saw the opening for a training post at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, intended for taking up one of the two lectureships in Tamil in the university. In the next four years, Asher learnt Tamil and choose the post at SOAS where he remained till 1965.
During his time at SOAS, he spent many years in South India and read a lot of works in Tamil.
In 1971, he authored his first book in Tamil, and in 1973, he came out with his celebrated work, Some Landmarks in the History of Tamil Prose. He was the president of the International Association of Tamil Research from 1983 to 1990.
His love for Tamil also introduced him to another Dravidian language, Malayalam. As he started reading Malayalam fiction, he was impressed by the works of celebrated writers Vaikom Muhammed Basheer and Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai. He developed a deep and lasting friendship with both the writers and went on to translate into English Thakazhi's Thottiyude Makan, and Basheer's Balyakalasakhi, Ntuppuppakkoranandarnnu, and Pathummayude Aadu. Other works he translated from Malayalam include Muttathu Varkey's Evil Spirit and K.P. Ramanunny's Sufi Paranja Katha.
Some of his other works include National Myths in Renaissance France, Atlas of the World's Languages, and The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics.
He also served as visiting professor of Malayalam and Tamil at the University of Michigan in 1968 and at the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, in 1995.
