Milan Budimir (1891–1975) was the most distinguished Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

n classical scholar, professor of the Serbian philosopher and Chair of the Department of the Classical Philology.

Life

Budimir was born in Mrkonjić Grad

Mrkonjic Grad

Mrkonjić Grad is a town and municipality in western Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Republika Srpska entity. It is located in the Bosanska Krajina, between Banja Luka and Jajce.-Name:...

 now in Republika Srpska

Republika Srpska

Republika Srpska is one of two main political entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina...

, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...

. He was educated in Sarajevo

Sarajevo

Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....

 and studied Classical Philology at the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, where he received his PhD in 1920. He was appointed the assistant the same year and soon the assistant professor at the Department of the University of Belgrade

University of Belgrade

The University of Belgrade is the oldest and largest university of Serbia.Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac-based departments into a single university...

 Faculty of Philosophy

University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy

The University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in Serbia, founded in the early 19th century within the Belgrade Higher School...

, than he was appointed Senior lecturer in 1928 and full professor in 1938. As the professor and the head of the Department of the Classical Philology, he worked until retirement in 1962, with interruptions during the German occupation in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

As a researcher of high rank, he was elected a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art in 1948 and became a regular member of the same Academy in 1955. Budimir died in Belgrade on 17 October 1975.

Milan Budimir did research in the field of classical philology in all its branches: history of classical languages, especially Old Greek, history of Old Greek

Greek literature

Greek literature refers to writings composed in areas of Greek influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek-speaking people have existed.-Ancient Greek literature :...

 and Roman literature

Latin literature

Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...

. He also did research of the Old Balkan and Slavic languages

Slavic languages

The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...

, the history of religion

History of religions

The history of religion refers to the written record of human religious experiences and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,000 years ago in the Near East. The prehistory of religion relates to a study of religious beliefs that existed prior to the...

, the heritage of the classical period in Serbia and Balkans, especially in language, literature and folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

, as well as the research in the field of linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

.

He started and edited the Balkan magazine Revue internationale des Études balkaniques along with Petar Skok between the wars. Budimir was a founder and co-editor ot the former main journal of Yugoslav philologists The Living Classical Periods with the most distinguished Yugoslav classical philologists.

The library of this blind scholar is at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and the Arts, Belgrade, where it is accorded a separate division among the special collections http://www.bib.sanu.ac.rs/eng/Posebne.htm. The special library for the blind in Belgrade is named for Milan Budimir.

Currents of pre-Indo-European Researches

The scientific opus of Milan Budimir includes several hundreds of works, books, studies, treatises and articles which may be divided into five big groups.

The first group consists of the works dealing with the research of pre-classical languages and cultures in the Balkans

Balkans

The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

, Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

 and the Apennines

Apennine mountains

The Apennines or Apennine Mountains or Greek oros but just as often used alone as a noun. The ancient Greeks and Romans typically but not always used "mountain" in the singular to mean one or a range; thus, "the Apennine mountain" refers to the entire chain and is translated "the Apennine...

. Milan Budimir's chief merit in this field relates to the gathering and explaining of the volumnious lexical material of the languages of the pre-Greek Indo- Europeans, as well as to the establishing of the phonetic laws of these languages.

According to the literary tradition, these, pre- Greek ancients are called the Pelasgians (Πελασγοί), but Milan Budimir calls them (Πελάσται), proceeding from the form Πελαστικέ (which appears in the scholias of Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

's Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

 16, 223), from the onomastic material in the field (Παλαιστή, toponym in Epirus

Epirus

The name Epirus, from the Greek "Ήπειρος" meaning continent may refer to:-Geographical:* Epirus - a historical and geographical region of the southwestern Balkans, straddling modern Greece and Albania...

; Palaestinus, older name for Strymon etc.), as well as from some common nouns proved by evidence (Πενέσται, name for the conquered population in classical Thessaly

Thessaly

Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....

; Πελάσται, name for the farmers bound to the land in Attic

Attic

An attic is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building . Attic is generally the American/Canadian reference to it...

).

The second group consists of the works presenting the research concerning special relations between the pre-Greek

Pre-Indo-European

Old Europe is a term coined by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceives as a relatively homogeneous and widespread pre-Indo-European Neolithic culture in Europe, particularly in Malta and the Balkans....

 idioms and the Slavonic languages; more precisely, the ProtoSlavonic language.

The third group consists of the works dealing with the research of the general phonetic laws of the Indo-European languages

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

, especially of the languages in contact.

The fourth group consists of the works dealing with the research in the field of classical literature, with special emphasis on the pre-Greek

Pre-Indo-European

Old Europe is a term coined by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceives as a relatively homogeneous and widespread pre-Indo-European Neolithic culture in Europe, particularly in Malta and the Balkans....

 origin of some literary genres and the European scene.

The fifth group consists of the works researching the cultural relations in the folklore of the South Slavs

South Slavic languages

The South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...

 and the classical peoples; these works are in close connection with the second group of Budimir's works.

(Currents of pre-Indo-European Researches - Source: Pelastian Proto-Slavonic Reletions According to the Researches of Milan Budinir by Ljiljana Crepajac

Ljiljana Crepajac

Ljiljana Crepajac is a Serbian classical scholar, philologist, a full-time professor at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy on the subject Historical grammar of Old Greek; she is the head of the Department of Classical Sciences , and she has been a full professor since 1987.Crepajac...

, PhD.)

Selected works

Milan Budimir presented and published results of his research which entered the best-known dictionaries and reference books in more than two hundred articles, discussions, studies and books with the following being the most important (titles given in English do not necessarily mean that an actual English translation has been published):

• From the Classical and Contemporary Aloglotty (1933),
• On the Iliad
  Iliad
  The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
  
  and its Poet (1940),
• Grci i Pelasgi ("The Greeks and the Pelasgians"), Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Department of Literature and Language, book 2, Belgrade (1950).
• The Problem of Beech and Protoslav Homeland (1951),
• Pelasto - Slavica (1956),
• Die Sprache als Schopfoung und Entwicklung (1957),
• Protoslavica (1958),
• Zur psychologischen Einheit unserer Ilias (1963),
• From the Balkan Sources (1969).