born Jan. 7, 1851, County Dublin, Ire.
died March 9, 1941, Camberley, Surrey, Eng.
Anglo-Irish civil servant and linguist.
While holding a succession of British government posts in Bengal (1873–98), Grierson carried out pioneering research on South Asian, particularly Indo-Aryan , languages. In 1898 he began work on the 19-volume Linguistic Survey of India and spent the next 30 years publishing data on hundreds of languages and dialects. His work was of enormous value; nevertheless, his hypothetical linguistic constructs such as "Rajasthani," "Bihari," and "Lahnda" misled most nonspecialists.