Bailey, H.

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Harold Walter Bailey(1899 - 1996)

Sir Harold Walter Bailey, FBA (16 December 1899–11 January 1996), who published as H. W. Bailey, was an eminent English scholar of Khotanese, Sanskrit, and the comparative study of Iranian languages.

Bailey has been described as one of the greatest Orientalists of the twentieth century. He was said to read more than 50 languages.

In 1929 Bailey began his doctoral dissertation, a translation with notes of the Greater Bundahishn, a compendium of Zoroastrian writings in Middle Persian recorded in the Pahlavi scripts. He became the world's leading expert in the Khotanese dialect of the Saka language, the mediaeval Iranian language of the Kingdom of Khotan (modern Xinjiang). His initial motivation for the study of Khotanese was an interest in the possible connection with the Bundahishn. He later passed his material on that work to Kaj Barr.

He was known for his immensely erudite lectures, and once confessed: "I have talked for ten and a half hours on the problem of one word without approaching the further problem of its meaning."

Bailey was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1944, and subsequently a member of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Academies. He received honorary degrees from four universities including Oxford; served as president of Philological Society, the Royal Asiatic Society, the Society for Afghan Studies, and the Society of Mithraic Studies; and chaired the Anglo-Iranian Society and Ancient India and Iran Trust. He was knighted for services to Oriental studies in 1960. (Source Accessed Dec 6, 2019)

See complete biography in Encyclopædia Iranica

Library Items

Article
A Fragment of the "Uttaratantra" in Sanskrit
A study and facsimile of a Sanskrit fragment of the Ratnagotravibhāga, published before the complete Sanskrit text became available.
Bailey, Harold W., and E. H. Johnston. "A Fragment of the Uttaratantra in Sanskrit." Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 8, no. 1 (1935): 77–89.
Book
Indo-Scythian Studies: Being Khotanese Texts, Vol. 5
The vast expansion of Indian culture by Buddhists who penetrated through Bactria into the region of modern Kashghar, Yarkand, Khotan, Maralbashi, Kucha and Loulan has been disclosed by the results of expeditions sent out in the first decade of this century. Among the numerous documents was a considerable number written in Ancient Khotan, but in a dialect of the Śakas, or Indo-Scythians, who from the first century BC to the third century AD were dominant in North-western India. Volume I of Khotanese Texts was published in 1946, Volume II in 1954 and Volume III, which completed the publication of the longer texts in 1956. Volume IV containing the Śaka Texts from the Hedin Collection appeared in 1961. The fifth volume completed the printing of the texts. When it was published in 1963, it contained a large number of fragments and other pieces published for the first time, as well as the Hoernle Collection, the Samguata-Sutra folios and the Karma Text. (Source: Cambridge University Press)
Bailey, Harold W. Indo-Scythian Studies: Being Khotanese Texts. Vol. 5. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1963.

On the topic of this person

Article
Hōshōron miroku chosaku setsu no kagen nendai saikō: Tonkō bonbun dankan IOL Khot S 5 to Pelliot 2740 no setsugō fukugen to nendai suitei
It was reported by H. W. Bailey that a Khotanese-hybrid Sanskrit manuscript fragment from Dunhuang, IOL Khot S5 (abbr. S5) verso side, quotes verses from the Ratnagotravibhāga (abbr. RGV) and attributes them to Maitreya. S5 is the earliest text hitherto known that ascribes the authorship of the RGV to Maitreya. While Bailey dates the S5 verso side to the period between the end of the 8th century and the 11th century, we can now further specify the date of composition as some time between the first half of the 9th century and the 11th century. Our rationale for this more specific terminus post quem is that the Chinese version of the Aparimitāyurjñānadhāraṇī (無量寿宗要経) written on the recto side of S5 is likely one of the numerous copies of the sūtra produced during (or shortly after) the reign of king Khri gtsug lde btsan, that is, during the first half of the 9th century. This fact is attested by two witnesses: Pelliot Tibétain 999 and the colophon of S5 recto side. There is also another Dunhuang Sanskrit fragment (Pelliot Chinois 2740) which quotes the RGV, and it is identified as the missing part of S5: the text of Pelliot 2740 recto precisely supplies the missing portion of S5 recto, and the two fragments are very similar in terms of size, material, and scripts. (Source: Academia.edu)
Kano, Kazuo. "Hōshōron miroku chosaku setsu no kagen nendai saikō: Tonkō bonbun dankan IOL Khot S 5 to Pelliot 2740 no setsugō fukugen to nendai suitei" (Dating the Earliest Source That Attributes the Ratnagotravibhāga to Maitreya: Sanskrit Fragments IOL Khot S 5 and Pelliot 2740 from Dunhuang). Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū (Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies) 60, no. 2 (2012): 168–74.
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