Friedrich August Rosen was a German Orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

, brother of Georg Rosen and a close friend of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He studied in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, and from 1824 in Berlin under Franz Bopp

Franz Bopp

Franz Bopp was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages.-Biography:...

. He was briefly professor of oriental literature at the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 and became secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society

Royal Asiatic Society

The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was established, according to its Royal Charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia." From its incorporation the Society...

 in 1831.
His Rigvedae specimen, excerpts from the Rigveda

Rigveda

The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...

 based on manuscripts brought back from India by Colebrooke

Henry Thomas Colebrooke

Henry Thomas Colebrooke was an English orientalist.-Biography:Henry Thomas Colebrooke, third son of Sir George Colebrooke, 2nd Baronet, was born in London. He was educated at home; and when only fifteen he had made considerable attainments in classics and mathematics...

 were enthusiastically received by European academia as the first authentic evidence of the archaic Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the oldest preserved Iranian language...

 language.
His most important work was an edition of the entire Rigveda, left incomplete at his premature death on his 32nd birthday. His translation of the first book of the Rigveda appeared posthumously in 1838. The remaining books remained unedited for another five decades, until the editio princeps of Max Müller

Max Müller

Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...

in 1890-92.

Works

• "Radices linguae sanscritae" (Berlin 1827).
• Rigvedae specimen (London, 1830)
• the Algebra of Mohammed ben Musa (London 1831)
• Rigveda-Sanhita, liber primus, sanscrite et latine" (London 1838)