MURPHY, Robert Xavier. 1803 — Kingstown, Dublin 26.2.1857. Irish Teacher, Journalist, Classical and Oriental Scholar in India. “He went out to Bombay as a master under the Bombay Native Education Society [1826 already there]; a classical scholar and quick acquiring Oriental languages. Edited the Bombay Gazette, 1834. Acted, 1839, as secretary to the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, and as Editor of the Bombay Times… Oriental Translator [of Marāṭhī] to Government, 1852… Was the first to invent and apply the expression ‘Towers of Silence’ to the places where the Parsis expose their dead. His health failed and he was sent home, 1855.” Married Charlotte Bellew (b. 1815), children.
Publications: “Wrote largely on Oriental subjects, philological, literary, antiquarian, sociological, ethnographical, and the folk-lore of Bombay; had a map of Bombay, town and island, prepared; wrote in the Journal of the Geographical Society, Bombay, and in the Dublin University Magazine.”
Sources: Buckland, Dictionary; stray notes in Internet.
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