MÜLLER, F. MAX (1823–1900), German-born philologist and Vedic scholar, professor at Oxford University and celebrated public lecturer in the comparative study of language, mythology, and religion, editor of the Rig-Veda Samhitâ (6 vols.), and editor of The Sacred Books of the East (50 vols.).

Friedrich Max Müller was born December 6, 1823, in Dessau, in the small German Duchy of Anhalt-Dessau. His father, Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827), had been a distinguished young Romantic poet known to many as the "Byron of Germany" for his Griechen Lieder, written in support of Greek nationalism. Before Wilhelm's untimely death, Franz Schubert had composed a pair of song cycles—Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin—that immortalized two of Wilhelm's best sets of poems. Max Müller's mother, Adelheide Müller (c.1799–1883), had been the eldest daughter of Ludwig von Basedow, a chief minister of...