Lt. Col. William Francklin, soldier and scholar of Persian and Indian history, was born in 1763. He was the son of Thomas Francklin, Professor of Greek at Cambridge. William Francklin joined the East India Company's Bengal Native Infantry in 1783. In 1786, he undertook a tour to Persia, for which he published his book 'Observations made on a tour from Bengal to Persia, in the years 1786-7'. He is known for authoring 'The history of the reign of Shah-Aulum, the present emperor of Hindostaun' (1798), being a detailed account of the decline of the Mughal Empire.
He retired from the army in 1825 and returned for a time to England, where he became librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1838, having been on the Society’s council in 1836. He contributed many articles to the Society’s journal and gave several lectures. He was also a member of the committee of the Oriental Translation Fund in 1835. He was also a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
Gordon Hannington Luce was born in Gloucester. He graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with a degree in Classics. In 1912 Luce was appointed Lecturer in English Literature at Government College, Rangoon, later a constituent college of the University of Rangoon. There he developed a lasting friendship with the young Pali scholar, Pe Maung Tin, and married his sister, Ma Tee Tee. During the Japanese invasion in 1942 Luce and his wife escaped into India. He returned to Rangoon after the war and remained there until 1964, when, like other foreigners, he was forced to leave the country. His final fifteen years were spent on Jersey. He published widely on subjects relating to Burma.
Lucian Scherman was born on October 10, 1864, in Posen. He was a German Indologist, curator of the Ethnology Museum in Munich, and also a professor at Munich University. After attending high school, in 1882, he began studying Sanskrit at the University of Breslau. In 1883 he moved to Munich, where he continued his studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Scherman received his doctorate in the summer of 1885. From October 1910 to December 1911, Scherman, and his wife Christine, undertook an extended research trip to Sri Lanka, Burma, Pakistan and India. Scherman's scholarship led to the creation of a Department of Asian Ethnology with an emphasis on Indian Culture. He died on May 29, 1946 in Hanson, Massachusetts.