The New International Encyclopædia/Jackson, Abraham Valentine Williams

JACKSON, Abraham Valentine Williams (1862—). An American Indo-Iranian scholar, born in New York City. He graduated at Columbia in 1883, there held a fellowship in letters from 1883 to 1886, and was instructor in the Anglo-Saxon and Iranian languages from 1887 to 1891. After advanced study at the University of Halle, Germany (1887-89), he was appointed adjunct professor of English language and literature in Columbia (1891). In 1895 he was selected to occupy the chair of Indo-Iranian languages, then newly founded. He became well known as a lecturer on various subjects appertaining to English literature and the Orient, and in 1901, during a visit to India and Ceylon, received special attention from the Parsis, who presented to Columbia a valuable collection of Zoroastrian manuscripts in recognition of the instruction there given by him in their ancient texts. In 1903 he made a second journey to the Orient, this time visiting Persia. He was elected a director of the American Oriental Society, and published A Hymn of Zoroaster (1888); An Avesta Grammar in Comparison with Sanskrit (1892); An Avesta Reader (1893); Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran (1898); and Die iranische Religion (1900).