Sir George Abraham Grierson OM KCIE FBA (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India.

He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languages and folklore of India during his postings in Bengal and Bihar.

He published numerous studies in the journals of learned societies and wrote several books during his administrative career but proposed a formal linguistic survey at the Oriental Congress in 1886 at Vienna.

Grierson was a delegate of the Royal Asiatic Society along with Dr Theodor Duka, Albert Terrien de Lacouperie, Cecil Bendall, and R. N.

He spent the following thirty years editing the enormous amount of material gathered[1] and worked briefly in collaboration with the Norwegian linguist Sten Konow (who contributed to volume III on Tibetan languages).

[2] On 8 May 1928 the completion of the Linguistic Survey of India was celebrated at the Criterion Restaurant by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland with Lord Birkenhead proposing the toast.

[9] Grierson published scholarly works throughout his career: on the dialects and peasant life of Bihar, on Hindi literature, on bhakti, and on linguistics.

His contemporaries noted both his lack of sympathy for Advaita Vedanta, which he regarded as "pandit religion," and his "warm appreciation of the monotheistic devotion of the country folk".

On his 85th birthday, an article was contributed in his honour and published by the School of Oriental Studies which included a list of Grierson's publications occupying 22 pages.