Ritter, Pavlo

Ritter, Pavlo [Ріттер, Павло], b 5 April 1872 in Chutove, Poltava county, Poltava gubernia, d 17 April 1939. Literary scholar, linguist-Sanskritologist, and translator. He graduated from Kharkiv University (1894), where he taught from 1897, became a professor in 1921, and became head of the chair of linguistics in 1922. One of the founders of the All-Ukrainian Learned Association of Oriental Studies and its organ Skhidnii svit, he contributed many entries on Indian literature to the Russian prerevolutionary Granat encyclopedia, translated numerous Sanskrit literary works into Russian, and translated works by Kalidasa and Rabindranath Tagore and Vedic hymns into Ukrainian. After being arrested during the Stalinist terror in 1938, he went mad and died in prison. A collection of biographical and bibliographic materials about him was published in 1966.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]