Background
Scherman was the son of merchants and landowners in Posen.
Scherman was the son of merchants and landowners in Posen.
After attending high school in Breslau and Posen, in 1882 he took up the study of Sanskrit at the University of Breslau with Adolf Friedrich Stenzler. In 1883 he relocated to Munich, where he continued his studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Scherman received his doctorate in the summer of 1885.
His dissertation was entitled Eine eingehende Erörterung der philosophischen Hymnen aus der Rigund Atharva-Veda-Sanhitâ sowohl an sich als auch im Verhältnis zur Philosophie der älteren Upanishad"son
The dissertation was, coincidentally, the answer to a prize question that his instructor, Ernst Kuhn, had put to the faculty. Scherman"s eminence both in Germany and abroad was so considerable that a special Department of Asian Ethnology with an emphasis on Indian Culture was created specifically for him.
Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
