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Edward William West, the oldest of 12 children, was born in Pentonville, London, on 2 May 1824. He was the son of William West, the owner of many cotton presses in India, and Margaret Anderson. His ancestors were "builders and mechanics." He was often ill as a child and therefore home-schooled. He entered a school at Pentonville from the age of 11 to 15. He then started studying engineering at King's College London where he won High Honours in 1842.

His parents had lived in India for some years before their marriage. His father lived in Bombay, and his mother, in Calcutta. In 1844, West went east to superintend the large establishment of family owned-cotton presses in Bombay. He worked there until 1850. During this time, he had a close relationship with his Parsee butler, testament to which is in the unpublished memoir of his brother, Arthur William West, and a box of Edward West's papers, both held at the British Library.

In 1852, he became the Chief Engineer on the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Project. More on this can be found in the British Library.

From as early as 1850, he studied the Kanheri caves in Mumbai. Guide to Kanheri Caves suggests that his most important contribution to academia before he moved to translating the "Pahlavi Texts" was of one of the sealings that "depicted a seated Buddha in Bhumisparsha Mudhra with ornaments around the figure and an inscription underneath" (Wani 6). He presented his findings to the Bombay Asiatic Society on the 12 April 1860 which was then subsequently published in the January edition of the BRAS under the title, "Copies of Inscriptions from the Buddhist Cave-Temples of Kánheri, &c. in the Island of Sulsette, with a plan of the Kanheri caves" (West 1861).

West's legacy remains in his translation of Zoroastrian texts from Pahlavi to English. He was in close contact with the Parsi community in Bombay. Arthur West's autobiography and narration of Edward West's stories show the presence of Parsi butlers in his house and managers in the cotton press.

A commonly accepted speculation regarding West's inspiration to translate the Pahlavi texts was Martin Haug's essay "Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis" (Bombay 1862). An edition of the same text "edited and enlarged" by West was published in 1907.

West began his work on a copy of the Avesta, or the scriptures of Zoroaster, accompanied by a Gujurati translation of the Avesta and Dhanjibhai Framji's, 'Pahlavi Grammar' (1855). He then continued his study of Pahlavi with Haug. Haug and West returned to Europe in 1866, when Haug was appointed Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at the University of Munich. West went to Munich for six years (1867-73) when he spent his time translating the Pahlavi texts of Zoroastrianism. On 17 June 1871, the University of Munich bestowed an honorary doctorate of Philosophy upon him. After a year in England (1873-4) West revisited India (1874-6) in order to procure manuscripts of the important Pahlavi books, 'Dēnkart' and 'Dātistan-i Dēnīk'; he paid a last visit to the Kanheri caves on 6 February 1875.

He meticulously drawn plans of the cotton presses and new developments can be seen in the British Library. The traces of this meticulousness are also observed in his Personal Papers held by the Royal Asiatic Society.

From 1876 to 1897, West worked on translating the Pahlavi Texts Vol. 1-5 for Prof. Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East Series. His work was widely recognised by Zoroastrian and Orientalist scholars from the West and the East. His meticulous notes in these papersshow his commitment to the collation of several manuscripts, many of them kept in poor condition by the archives and libraries. Through his footnotes, he marked the differences and similarities he found in the manuscripts, while paying attention to the interweaving of different languages in a single MS. (i.e. presence of Sanskrit, Persian, and Gujarati).

His service to the profession was widely recognised: The Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1887 made him a corresponding member; he was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and on 6 July 1901 he was presented with the Society's Triennial Gold Medal. The American Oriental Society awarded him an honorary membership. West was also in correspondence with contemporary scholars including Peshotan Bharamji Sanjana. Sanjana was interested in the inconsistencies that West found between his father's manuscript and other copies of the same manuscript.

He died in his eighty-first year at Watford, on 4 February 1905. He was survived by his wife Sarah Margaret Barclay, and by an only son, Max, an artist.

Edward William West was the eldest of twelve siblings born in 1824 to William West, owner of West's Patent Press Company Ltd, and Margaret Anderson. In May 1844 at the age of 20, he travelled to Mumbai as a superintendent of the machinery and buildings of the family-owned cotton packing company. Following a short visit to England, he returned to India in 1851 as an executive engineer of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company (GIPR), where the following year he became Chief Engineer.

The railway projects in British India fall within the vast colonial surveying project which saw territories mapped and documented in vast detail. Included in such surveys were the documentation of architectural and archaeological sites. Before the formation of the Archaeological Survey of India, which codified and centralised this practice within the government, the work of engineers such as the West brothers, for whom work facilitated and necessitated travel and armed them with the technical expertise, forms a meticulous bank of knowledge of historical sites across British India.

Edward was one of five brothers who took part in this documentation project of rock-cut caves and temples in the Maharashtra region of India. Arthur Anderson West joined his brother in November 1849 as a railway surveyor for the GIPR. Henry Anderson travelled to India in 1851 with Edward William to work as a surveyor with the GIPR. Following the completion of the line between Mumbai to Janna, in 1853, Henry spent a total of almost seven months (between April and October 1853) systematically documenting the Kanheri Caves. Walter West joined the project later, in 1870, travelling to the Kanheri Caves to clarify information left unresolved from Edward and Arthur's last visit in 1866 prior to their return to England.

The material was gifted to the Royal Asiatic Society in December 1917 by Mrs. Burgess, the wife of the then late James Burgess, architectural historian and once General-Director of the Archaeological Survey of India. The material came into Burgess' possession following the death of Edward in 1905, sent to him in 1906 by his surviving brother Arthur under the guise of exploring the prospect of publishing the portfolios of drawings, plans, and notes. Nothing however appears to have come of this project and the material remained in Burgess's possession until his death in October 1916.

A.R. Ward resided in New South Wales. He was the author of Prophecy concerning the Rōsh Kĕlälǟh. He was alive and active in the 1920s.