Wilson, HORACE HAYMAN, Sanskrit scholar, was born in London, 26th September 1786. He studied medicine, and in 1808 went to India as assistant-surgeon on the Bengal establishment of the E.I.C. His knowledge of chemistry led to his being employed in the Calcutta mint as assistant to Leyden; his mastery of Sanskrit, to his appointment on the recommendation of Colebrooke as secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1833 he became Boden professor of Sanskrit in Oxford, and soon after was appointed librarian at the East India House. These appointments he held till his death, 8th May 1860.
His first work was a verse translation of Kālidāsa's Meghadūta, or Cloud Messenger (1813). Next followed a Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1819); Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus (3 vols. 1827); translations of the Raghū Vansa (1832); the Vishnū-Purāṇa (1840); Rig-Veda-Saṃhita Sanskrit Grammar (1841); Ariana Antiqua, the Antiquities and Coins of Afghanistan (1841); History of British India from 1505 to 1835 (1848); Rig-Veda-Saṃhita (1850); and Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms, from the Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, &c. (1855). His collected works have been edited by R. Rost and F. Hall (13 vols. 1861-67).