COWELL, EDWARD BYLES English Sanskrit scholar, was born at Ipswich on Jan. 23, 1826. He entered the business of his father, who was a merchant and maltster, em ploying his leisure in oriental and other studies. He was a friend and correspondent at this period of Edward Fitzgerald (q.v.). He was already married when he entered Magdalen hall, Oxford, in 185o, and was an undergraduate when he published his transla tion of Kalidasa's Vikramorvasi (1851). In 1854 he became pro fessor of English history in the Presidency college, Calcutta, and in 1858 principal of the Sanskrit college there. During his resi dence in India he was in close contact with Hindu scholars and, in addition to many publications in the Bibliotheca Indica and elsewhere, he edited (with Roer) part of the Black Yajur Veda (vols. i. and ii., 1858-64), and edited and translated the Kusu mdn jali (Calcutta, 1864) . Cowell returned to England in 1864, and in 1867 became professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge, where he lived until his death (Feb. 9, 1903) .
Among Cowell's works are : A translation, with A. E. Gough, of the Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha (1882) ; an edition, with R. A. Neil, of the Asvaghosha (1893, trans. 1894) ; a translation, with F. W. Thomas, of the Harsacarita of Bana (1897).
See G. Cowell, Life and Letters of Edward Byles Cowell (1904), where a full bibliography of his works is given ; and a notice by F. W. Thomas in the Dict. Nat. Biog. (Supplement for 1901-II).