Henry Heras

Henry Heras (11 September 1888, Barcelona, Spain - 14 December 1955, Bombay, India) was a Spanish Jesuit priest, archeologist and historian in India.

Enric Heras de Sicars (later in India he anglicised his Christian name to Henry) was the heir of a well-off rural household from the village of Canet d'Adri, near Girona, in Catalonia. His parents were Ponç Heras and Maria Sicars. The Heras family had been established in the property of Adri since the late thirteenth century, but Enric gave up his rights in order to follow his religious vocation. After becoming a Jesuit in 1904, Heras followed the usual course of Jesuit priestly formation: three years of philosophy in Tortosa, three years of teaching History in Orihuela, Alacant, Spain, and the theological course in Sarrià, Barcelona, at the end of which he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1920.

On arrival in India (1922) he was appointed to teach history at St Xavier's College, Bombay. He chose to teach Indian history "because he wanted to study it". This became his favorite subject and field of competence. He wrote a short book on historical methodology, The Writing of History, which became compulsory reading for his students.

He founded the Indian Historical Research Institute (1926), which trained numerous historians and Indologists, including Frank Moraes, Dr. Keny, and others. The institute was later renamed the Heras Institute of Indian History and Culture.

From 1935 on he turned his attention to the newly excavated archeological sites of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa: he was particularly keen on deciphering the inscriptions of the so-called Indus Valley Civilization. He wrote numerous articles on the topic, summing up finally his research in what will remain his master piece: Studies in Proto-Indo-Mediterranean Culture (1953) in which he proposed a solution to the mysterious script of Mohenjo-Daro, and established cultural links between the Indus Valley Civilization, the Sumerian-Egyptian civilization and the ancient Mediterranean cultures. Though the deciphering he proposed is not yet fully convincing it is "gaining ever greater acceptance by the specialists". Although, fellow Jesuits in India, like father George Gispert (i.e. Jordi Gispert-Saüch) have expressed that his paramount work was his book on Vijayanagar.

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