The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Jackson, Abraham Valentine Williams

JACKSON, Abraham Valentine Williams, American Indo-Iranian scholar: b. New York, 9 Feb. 1862. Graduated from Columbia in 1883, he was Fellow in letters there (1883-86), instructor in Anglo-Saxon and the Iranian languages (1887-90), and, after study at Halle (1887-89), adjunct professor of English language and literature (1891-95). In 1895 he was appointed professor of Indo-Iranian languages and public lecturer at Columbia. By way of recognition of the instruction given by him in their ancient books, the Parsees made to the Columbia library the gift of an important manuscript collection of Zoroastrian works. He appeared also as a public lecturer, became one of the directors of the American Oriental Society, and in addition to numerous contributions to the Journal of that society and other learned periodicals, wrote ‘A Hymn of Zoroaster, Yasna XXXI’ (1888); ‘An Avestan Grammar’ (1892); ‘An Avestan Reader’ (1893); ‘Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran’ (1899). He traveled for research in India in 1901 and 1911, receiving special attention from the Parsis community in India; and also traveled in Persia and central Asia in 1903, 1907 and 1910. He wrote ‘Persia, Past and Present’ (1906); ‘From Constantinople to the Home of Omar Khayyam’ (1911), and with A. Yohannan the ‘Descriptive Catalogue of the Persian MSS. in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’ (1913). He edited the ‘Columbia University Indo-Iranian Series’ (5 vols., 1902), and ‘A History of India’ (9 vols., 1906-15).