Ernest Bender

Ernest Bender (January 2, 1919 – April 18, 1996) was a Professor of Indo-Aryan languages and literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bender was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on January 2, 1919, before moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when he was aged four. He was admitted into the selective Greek and Latin program of Boys High School (Central High School), and graduated in 1937. Bender undertook his undergraduate studies at Temple University where he continued his studies in classics, firmly entrenching his lifelong interest in philology and cultural history. Upoon earning his B.A. in 1941, Bender became a graduate student in the Oriental Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania. There he became acquainted with the three teachers who influenced him the most: W. Norman Brown in Indology, and Zellig Harris and Henry Hoenigswald in linguistics. Through Brown, Bender pursued a career in Indology, specializing in medieval Jainism and its associated literature and art.

Shortly after the United States declared war on Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Bender was drafted into the United States Air Force, but was discharged from active duty due to medical reasons. Due to his talent and background in classical languages, Bender was given a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies to study Hindi and Urdu at the Asia Society in New York City. He then returned to Philadelphia, serving from 1943 to 1944 as an instructor of Hindi and Urdu in the Army Specialized Training Program. From 1944 until 1946, Bender coordinated the Army Specialized Training Program in Japanese. At the same time, Bender was awarded two consecutive Harrison fellowships at Pennsylvania for the study of Sanskrit. While studying Indology, Bender continued working with Harris on linguistics, coauthoring two articles on the Cherokee language. An unpublished manuscript of Cherokee texts, complete with translations and grammatical analysis is stored in the Boas Collection in the Library of the American Philosophical Society.

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