Arthur Avalon was Sir John Woodroffe's pen name.
Sir John George Woodroffe (15 December 1865 – 16 January 1936), sometimes known as Arthur Avalon, was a British Orientalist whose vast and complicated published works on the Tantras and other Hindu traditions sparked a broad interest in Hindu philosophy and yoga.
- He studied Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy in addition to his judicial responsibilities, and he was particularly interested in Hindu Tantra.
- He translated twenty original Sanskrit works and published and spoke extensively on Indian philosophy and a broad variety of Yoga and Tantra subjects under the alias Arthur Avalon.
- "By editing the original Sanskrit scriptures, as well as by writing articles on the various elements of Shaktism, he demonstrated that the religion and worship had a deep philosophy behind it, and that the method of devotion it advises was nothing illogical or obscurantist," T.M.P. Mahadevan wrote.
James Tisdall Woodroffe and his wife Florence, a daughter of James Hume, had a son named Woodroffe.
- James Woodroffe was a Justice of the Peace, and a Knight of St. Gregory.
- He was the Advocate-General of Bengal and a Legal Member of the Government of India.
- John received his education at Woburn Park School and University College, Oxford, where he studied jurisprudence and passed the Bachelor of Civil Law exams.
- In 1889, he was admitted to the Inner Temple and registered as an advocate of the Calcutta High Court the following year.
- He was shortly named Tagore Law Professor and became a Fellow of Calcutta University.
- In a widely used textbook, Civil Procedure in British India, he worked with Ameer Ali.
- In 1902, he was appointed as the Government of India's Standing Counsel, and in 1904, he was promoted to the High Court Bench.
- He became Chief Justice in 1915 after eighteen years on the bench.
- After retiring to England, he worked at the University of Oxford as a Reader in Indian Law.
- He died in France on January 18, 1936.
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