Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Boden Professor of Sanskrit election, 1860

Boden Professor of Sanskrit election, 1860
This nomination predates the introduction in April 2014 of article-specific subpages for nominations and has been created from the edit history of Today's featured article/requests. 
 * This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page. 

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/August 7, 2013 by BencherliteTalk 19:00, 2 July 2013‎ (UTC)



The election in 1860 for the position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford was a hotly contested affair between two candidates with different approaches to Sanskrit scholarship. Monier Williams (pictured), an Oxford-educated Englishman who taught Sanskrit to those preparing to work in British India, regarded the study of Sanskrit as a way to help convert India to Christianity. Max Müller, an internationally regarded scholar in comparative philology (the science of language) thought that his work, while it would assist missionaries, was valuable as an end in itself. They battled for the votes of the electorate (the Convocation of the university, consisting of over 3,700 graduates) through manifestos and newspaper correspondence. The election came at a time of public debate about Britain's role in India after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Although generally regarded as the superior scholar, Müller had the double disadvantage (in some eyes) of being German and having liberal Christian views. Special trains to Oxford were provided for non-residents to cast their votes. Williams won the election by a majority of over 230 votes, and held the chair until his death in 1899.


 * 3 points (education is one of the underrepresented categories at FA: 1 point - no similar articles in 6 months (last education article was November last year): 2 points). I suppose I could just schedule this directly, but as it's an FA where I'm the primary author, that would be a bit discourteous to the community... 1,207 characters in the blurb including spaces and no deadlinks or other maintenance issues in the article. BencherliteTalk 11:08, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, interesting article related to science of language, underrepresented topic on Main Page. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 16:23, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, fixed typo.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Support-Interesting article, highly underrepresented. QatarStarsLeague (talk) 15:37, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, interesting and rare, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:55, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Needs a better boldface link, I think. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:54, 25 June 2013 (UTC)