Siddheshwar Varma

Siddheshwar Varma (1887–1985) was an Indian linguist, phonetician, grammarian and scholar, known for his knowledge of over 30 languages. He was the secretary of the International Moral Education Congress for India and the author of such books as The Bhalesī dialect, A Glossary of the Khāsī : a north-western Himalayan dialect of Jammu and Kashmir, Siddha-Bhāratī; The rosary of Indology and Pahari dictionary of 27-north-western Himalayan dialects. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1957, for his contributions to literature and education.

Biography Siddheshwar Varma, originally named Pindidas, was born on 3 November 1887 at Rawalpindi in the erstwhile Punjab province of British India in a Khatri family to Ram Dass Nanda and Jamana Devi, and did his early schooling at various places in Punjab like Rawalpindi, Kamalpur, Jhelum, Gujranwala and Mianwali.

While continuing his linguistic studies through his years in Jammu, Varma learned several Indian and foreign languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, French, Greek, Latin, Russian, Slavonic, German, Arabic, and Persian; he was reported to have learned 30 different languages.

Selected bibliography