PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI
1801-1830
Carey the only Sanskrit scholar in India besides Colebrooke--The motive
of the missionary scholar--Plans translation of the sacred books of the
East--Comparative philology from Leibniz to Carey--Hindoo and
Mohammedan codes and colleges of Warren Hastings--The Marquis
Wellesley--The College of Fort William founded--Character of the
Company's civil and military servants--Curriculum of study, professors
and teachers--The vernacular languages--Carey's account of the college
and his appointment--How he studied Sanskrit--College Disputation Day
in the new Government House--Carey's Sanskrit speech--Lord Wellesley's
eulogy--Sir James Mackintosh--Carey's pundits--He projects the
Bibliotheca Asiatica--On the Committee of the Bengal Asiatic
Society--Edition and translation of the Ramayana epic--The
Hitopadesa--His Universal Dictionary--Influence of Carey on the civil
and military services--W. B. Bayley; B. H. Hodgson; R. Jenkins; R. M.
and W. Bird; John Lawrence.
When, in the opening days of the nineteenth century, William Carey was
driven to settle in Danish Serampore, he was the only member of the
governing race in North India who knew the language of the people so as
to teach it; the only scholar, with the exception of Colebrooke, who
could speak Sanskrit as fluently as the Brahmans. The Bengali language
he had made the vehicle of the teaching of Christ, of the thought of
Paul, of the revelation of John. Of the Sanskrit, hitherto concealed
from alien eyes or diluted only through the Persian, he had prepared a
grammar and begun a dictionary, while he had continually used its great
epics in preaching to the Brahmans, as Paul had quoted the Greek poets
on the Areopagus. And all this he had done as the missionary of Christ
and the scholar afterwards. Reporting to Ryland, in August 1800, the
publication of the Gospels and of "several small pieces" in Bengali, he
excused his irregularity in keeping a journal, "for in the printing I
have to look over the copy and correct the press, which is much more
laborious than it would be in England, because spelling, writing,
printing, etc., in Bengali is almost a new thing, and we have in a
manner to fix the orthography." A little later, in a letter to
Sutcliff, he used language regarding the sacred books of the Hindoos
which finds a parallel more than eighty years after in Professor Max
Müller's preface to his series of the sacred books of the East, the
translation of which Carey was the first to plan and to begin from the
highest of all motives. Mr. Max Müller calls attention to the "real
mischief that has been and is still being done by the enthusiasm of
those pioneers who have opened the first avenues through the
bewildering forests of the sacred literature of the East." He declares
that "Eastern nations themselves would not tolerate, in any of their
classical literary compositions, such violations of the simplest rules
of taste as they have accustomed themselves to tolerate, if not to
admire, in their sacred books." And he is compelled to leave
untranslated, while he apologises for them, the frequent allusions to
the sexual aspects of nature, "particularly in religious books." The
revelations of the Maharaj trial in Bombay are the practical fruit of
all this.
"CALCUTTA, 17th March 1802.--I have been much astonished lately at the
malignity of some of the infidel opposers of the Gospel, to see how
ready they are to pick every flaw they can in the inspired writings,
and even to distort the meaning, that they may make it appear
inconsistent; while these very persons will labour to reconcile the
grossest contradictions in the writings accounted sacred by the
Hindoos, and will stoop to the meanest artifices in order to apologise
for the numerous glaring falsehoods and horrid violations of all
decency and decorum, which abound in almost every page. Any thing, it
seems, will do with these men but the word of God. They ridicule the
figurative language of Scripture, but will run allegory-mad in support
of the most worthless productions that ever were published. I should
think it time lost to translate any of them; and only a sense of duty
excites me to read them. An idea, however, of the advantage which the
friends of Christianity may obtain by having these mysterious sacred
nothings (which have maintained their celebrity so long merely by being
kept from the inspection of any but interested Brahmans) exposed to
view, has induced me, among other things, to write the Sanskrit
grammar, and to begin a dictionary of that language. I sincerely pity
the poor people, who are held by the chains of an implicit faith in the
grossest of lies; and can scarcely help despising the wretched infidel
who pleads in their favour and tries to vindicate them. I have long
wished to obtain a copy of the Veda; and am now in hopes I shall be
able to procure all that are extant. A Brahman this morning offered to
get them for me for the sake of money. If I succeed, I shall be
strongly tempted to publish them with a translation, pro bono publico."
It was not surprising that the Governor-General, even if he had been
less enlightened than Lord Wellesley, found in this missionary
interloper, as the East India Company officially termed the class to
which he belonged, the only man fit to be Professor of Bengali,
Sanskrit, and Marathi in the College of Fort William, and also
translator of the laws and regulations of the Government.
In a memoir read before the Berlin Academy of Sciences, which he had
founded in the first year of the eighteenth century, Leibniz first
sowed the seed of the twin sciences of comparative philology and
ethnology, to which we owe the fruitful results of the historical and
critical school. That century was passed in the necessary collection
of facts, of data. Carey introduced the second period, so far as the
learned and vernacular languages of North India are concerned--of
developing from the body of facts which his industry enormously
extended, the principles upon which these languages were constructed,
besides applying these principles, in the shape of grammars,
dictionaries, and translations, to the instruction and Christian
civilisation alike of the learned and of the millions of the people.
To the last, as at the first, he was undoubtedly only what he called
himself, a pioneer to prepare the way for more successful civilisers
and scholars. But his pioneering was acknowledged by contemporary[14]
and later Orientalists, like Colebrooke and H. H. Wilson, to be of
unexampled value in the history of scientific research and industry,
while the succeeding pages will show that in its practical results the
pioneering came as nearly to victory as is possible, until native India
lives its own national Christian life.
When India first became a united British Empire under one
Governor-General and the Regulating Act of Parliament of 1773, Warren
Hastings had at once carried out the provision he himself had suggested
for using the moulavies and pundits in the administration of Mussulman
and Hindoo law. Besides colleges in Calcutta and Benares to train
such, he caused those codes of Mohammedan and Brahmanical law to be
prepared which afterwards appeared as The Hedaya and The Code of Gentoo
Laws. The last was compiled in Sanskrit by pundits summoned from all
Bengal and maintained in Calcutta at the public cost, each at a rupee a
day. It was translated through the Persian, the language of the
courts, by the elder Halhed into English in 1776. That was the first
step in English Orientalism. The second was taken by Sir William
Jones, a predecessor worthy of Carey, but cut off all too soon while
still a young man of thirty-four, when he founded the Bengal Asiatic
Society in 1784 on the model of Boyle's Royal Society. The code of
Warren Hastings had to be arranged and supplemented into a reliable
digest of the original texts, and the translation of this work, as done
by pundit Jaganatha, was left, by the death of Jones, to Colebrooke,
who completed it in 1797. Charles Wilkins had made the first direct
translation from the Sanskrit into English in 1785, when he published
in London The Bhagavat-Geeta or Dialogue of Krishna and Arjoon, and his
is the imperishable honour thus chronicled by a contemporary
poetaster:--
"But he performed a yet more noble part,
He gave to Asia typographic art."
In Bengali Halhed had printed at Hoogli in 1783, with types cut by
Wilkins, the first grammar, but it had become obsolete and was
imperfect. Such had been the tentative efforts of the civilians and
officials of the Company when Carey began anew the work from the only
secure foundation, the level of daily sympathetic intercourse with the
people and their Brahmans, with the young as well as the old.
The Marquis Wellesley was of nearly the same age as Carey, whom he soon
learned to appreciate and to use for the highest good of the empire.
Of the same name and original English descent as John and Charles
Wesley, the Governor-General was the eldest and not the least brilliant
of the Irish family which, besides him, gave to the country the Duke of
Wellington and Lord Cowley. While Carey was cobbling shoes in an
unknown hamlet of the Midlands and was aspiring to convert the world,
young Wellesley was at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, acquiring the
classical scholarship which, as we find its fruits in his Primiti[oe] et
Reliqui[oe], extorted the praise of De Quincey. When Carey was starving
in Calcutta unknown the young lord was making his mark in the House of
Commons by a speech against the Jacobins of France in the style of
Burke. The friend of Pitt, he served his apprenticeship to Indian
affairs in the Board of Control, where he learned to fight the
directors of the East India Company, and he landed at Calcutta in 1798,
just in time to save the nascent empire from ruin by the second Mysore
war and the fall of Tipoo at Seringapatam. Like that other marquis who
most closely resembled him half a century after, the Scottish
Dalhousie, his hands were no sooner freed from the uncongenial bonds of
war than he became even more illustrious by his devotion to the
progress which peace makes possible. He created the College of Fort
William, dating the foundation of what was fitted and intended to be
the greatest seat of learning in the East from the first anniversary of
the victory of Seringapatam. So splendidly did he plan, so wisely did
he organise, and with such lofty aims did he select the teachers of the
college, that long after his death he won from De Quincey the impartial
eulogy, that of his three services to his country and India this was
the "first, to pave the way for the propagation of Christianity--mighty
service, stretching to the clouds, and which in the hour of death must
have given him consolation."
When Wellesley arrived at Calcutta he had been shocked by the sensual
ignorance of the Company's servants. Sunday was universally given up
to horse-racing and gambling. Boys of sixteen were removed from the
English public schools where they had hardly mastered the rudiments of
education to become the magistrates, judges, revenue collectors, and
governors of millions of natives recently brought under British sway.
At a time when the passions most need regulation and the conscience
training, these lads found themselves in India with large incomes,
flattered by native subordinates, encouraged by their superiors to lead
lives of dissipation, and without the moral control even of the weakest
public opinion. The Eton boy and Oxford man was himself still young,
and he knew the world, but he saw that all this meant ruin to both the
civil and military services, and to the Company's system. The
directors addressed in a public letter, dated 25th May 1798, "an
objurgation on the character and conduct" of their servants. They
re-echoed the words of the new Governor-General in their condemnation
of a state of things, "highly discreditable to our Government, and
totally incompatible with the religion we profess." Such a service as
this, preceding the creation of the college, led Pitt's other friend,
Wilberforce, in the discussions on the charter of 1813, to ascribe to
Lord Wellesley, when summoning him to confirm and revise it, the system
of diffusing useful knowledge of all sorts as the true foe not only of
ignorance but of vice and of political and social decay.
Called upon to prevent the evils he had been the first to denounce
officially, Lord Wellesley wrote his magnificent state paper of 1800,
which he simply termed Notes on the necessity of a special collegiate
training of Civil Servants. The Company's factories had grown into the
Indian Empire of Great Britain. The tradesmen and clerks, whom the
Company still called "writer," "factor," and "merchant," in their
several grades, had, since Clive obtained a military commission in
disgust at such duties, become the judges and rulers of millions,
responsible to Parliament. They must be educated in India itself, and
trained to be equal to the responsibilities and temptations of their
position. If appointed by patronage at home when still at school, they
must be tested after training in India so that promotion shall depend
on degrees of merit. Lord Wellesley anticipated the modified system of
competition which Macaulay offered to the Company in 1853, and the
refusal of which led to the unrestricted system which has prevailed
with varying results since that time. Nor was the college only for the
young civilians as they arrived. Those already at work were to be
encouraged to study. Military officers were to be invited to take
advantage of an institution which was intended to be "the university of
Calcutta," "a light amid the darkness of Asia," and that at a time when
in all England there was not a military college. Finally, the college
was designed to be a centre of Western learning in an Eastern dress for
the natives of India and Southern Asia, alike as students and teachers.
A noble site was marked out for it on the stately sweep of Garden
Reach, where every East Indiaman first dropped its anchor, and the
building was to be worthy of the founder who erected Government House.
The curriculum of study included Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit;
Bengali, Marathi, Hindostani (Hindi), Telugoo, Tamil, and Kanarese;
English, the Company's, Mohammedan and Hindoo law, civil jurisprudence,
and the law of nations; ethics; political economy, history, geography,
and mathematics; the Greek, Latin, and English classics, and the modern
languages of Europe; the history and antiquities of India; natural
history, botany, chemistry, and astronomy. The discipline was that of
the English universities as they then were, under the Governor-General
himself, his colleagues, and the appellate judges. The senior
chaplain, the Rev. David Brown, was provost in charge of the
discipline; and Dr. Claudius Buchanan was vice-provost in charge of the
studies, as well as professor of Greek, Latin, and English. Dr.
Gilchrist was professor of Hindostani, in teaching which he had already
made a fortune; Lieutenant J. Baillie of Arabic; and Mr. H. B.
Edmonstone of Persian. Sir George Barlow expounded the laws or
regulations of the British Government in India. The Church of England
constitution of the college at first, to which Buchanan had applied the
English Test Act, and his own modesty, led Carey to accept of his
appointment, which was thus gazetted:--"The Rev. William Carey, teacher
of the Bengali and Sanskrit languages."
The first notice of the new college which we find in Carey's
correspondence is this, in a letter to Sutcliff dated 27th November
1800:--"There is a college erected at Fort William, of which the Rev.
D. Brown is appointed provost, and C. Buchanan classical tutor: all the
Eastern languages are to be taught in it." "All" the languages of India
were to be taught, the vernacular as well as the classical and purely
official. This was a reform not less radical and beneficial in its
far-reaching influence, and not less honourable to the scholarly
foresight of Lord Wellesley, than Lord William Bentinck's new era of
the English language thirty-five years after. The rulers and
administrators of the new empire were to begin their career by a three
years' study of the mother tongue of the people, to whom justice was
administered in a language foreign alike to them and their governors,
and of the Persian language of their foreign Mohammedan conquerors.
That the peoples of India, "every man in his own language," might hear
and read the story of what the one true and living God had done for us
men and our salvation, Carey had nine years before given himself to
acquire Bengali and the Sanskrit of which it is one of a numerous
family of daughters, as the tongues of the Latin nations of Europe and
South America are of the offspring of the speech of Caesar and Cicero.
Now, following the missionary pioneer, as educational, scientific, and
even political progress has ever since done in the India which would
have kept him out, Lord Wellesley decreed that, like the missionary,
the administrator and the military officer shall master the language of
the people. The five great vernaculars of India were accordingly
named, and the greatest of all, the Hindi, which was not scientifically
elaborated till long after, was provided for under the mixed dialect or
lingua franca known as Hindostani.
When Carey and his colleagues were congratulating themselves on a
reform which has already proved as fruitful of results as the first
century of the Renascence of Europe, he little thought, in his modesty,
that he would be recognised as the only man who was fit to carry it
out. Having guarded the college, as they thought, by a test, Brown and
Buchanan urged Carey to take charge of the Bengali and Sanskrit classes
as "teacher" on Rs. 500 a month or £700 a year. Such an office was
entirely in the line of the constitution of the missionary brotherhood.
But would the Government which had banished it to Serampore recognise
the aggressively missionary character of Carey, who would not degrade
his high calling by even the suspicion of a compromise? To be called
and paid as a teacher rather than as the professor whose double work he
was asked to do, was nothing to the modesty of the scholar who pleaded
his sense of unfitness for the duties. His Master, not himself, was
ever Carey's first thought, and the full professorship, rising to £1800
a year, was soon conferred on the man who proved himself to be almost
as much the college in his own person as were the other professors put
together. A month after his appointment he thus told the story to Dr.
Ryland in the course of a long letter devoted chiefly to the first
native converts:--
"SERAMPORE, 15th June 1801...We sent you some time ago a box full of
gods and butterflies, etc., and another box containing a hundred copies
of the New Testament in Bengali...Mr. Lang is studying Bengali, under
me, in the college. What I have last mentioned requires some
explanation, though you will probably hear of it before this reaches
you. You must know, then, that a college was founded last year in Fort
William, for the instruction of the junior civil servants of the
Company, who are obliged to study in it three years after their
arrival. I always highly approved of the institution, but never
entertained a thought that I should be called to fill a station in it.
To my great surprise I was asked to undertake the Bengali
professorship. One morning a letter from Mr. Brown came, inviting me
to cross the water, to have some conversation with him upon this
subject. I had but just time to call our brethren together, who were
of opinion that, for several reasons, I ought to accept it, provided it
did not interfere with the work of the mission. I also knew myself to
be incapable of filling such a station with reputation and propriety.
I, however, went over, and honestly proposed all my fears and
objections. Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Buchanan were of opinion that the
cause of the mission would be furthered by it; and I was not able to
reply to their arguments. I was convinced that it might. As to my
ability, they could not satisfy me; but they insisted upon it that they
must be the judges of that. I therefore consented, with fear and
trembling. They proposed me that day, or the next, to the
Governor-General, who is patron and visitor of the college. They told
him that I had been a missionary in the country for seven years or
more; and as a missionary I was appointed to the office. A clause had
been inserted in the statutes to accommodate those who are not of the
Church of England (for all professors are to take certain oaths, and
make declarations); but, for the accommodation of such, two other names
were inserted, viz., lecturers and teachers, who are not included under
that obligation. When I was proposed, his lordship asked if I was well
affected to the state, and capable of fulfilling the duties of the
station; to which Mr. B. replied that he should never have proposed me
if he had had the smallest doubt on those heads. I wonder how people
can have such favourable ideas of me. I certainly am not disaffected
to the state; but the other is not clear to me.
"When the appointment was made, I saw that I had a very important
charge committed to me, and no books or helps of any kind to assist me.
I therefore set about compiling a grammar, which is now half printed.
I got Ram Basu to compose a history of one of their kings, the first
prose book ever written in the Bengali language; which we are also
printing. Our pundit has also nearly translated the Sanskrit fables,
one or two of which Brother Thomas sent you, which we are also going to
publish, These, with Mr. Foster's vocabulary, will prepare the way to
reading their poetical books; so that I hope this difficulty will be
gotten through. But my ignorance of the way of conducting collegiate
exercises is a great weight upon my mind. I have thirteen students in
my class; I lecture twice a week, and have nearly gone through one
term, not quite two months. It began 4th May. Most of the students
have gotten through the accidents, and some have begun to translate
Bengali into English. The examination begins this week. I am also
appointed teacher of the Sanskrit language; and though no students have
yet entered in that class, yet I must prepare for it. I am, therefore,
writing a grammar of that language, which I must also print, if I
should be able to get through with it, and perhaps a dictionary, which
I began some years ago. I say all this, my dear brother, to induce you
to give me your advice about the best manner of conducting myself in
this station, and to induce you to pray much for me, that God may, in
all things, be glorified by me. We presented a copy of the Bengali New
Testament to Lord Wellesley, after the appointment, through the medium
of the Rev. D. Brown, which was graciously received. We also presented
Governor Bie with one.
"Serampore is now in the hands of the English. It was taken while we
were in bed and asleep; you may therefore suppose that it was done
without bloodshed. You may be perfectly easy about us: we are equally
secure under the English or Danish Government, and I am sure well
disposed to both."
For seven years, since his first settlement in the Dinapoor district,
Carey had given one-third of his long working day to the study of
Sanskrit. In 1796 he reported:--"I am now learning the Sanskrit
language, that I may be able to read their Shasters for myself; and I
have acquired so much of the Hindi or Hindostani as to converse in it
and speak for some time intelligibly...Even the language of Ceylon has
so much affinity with that of Bengal that out of twelve words, with the
little Sanskrit that I know, I can understand five or six." In 1798 he
wrote:--"I constantly employ the forenoon in temporal affairs; the
afternoon in reading, writing, learning Sanskrit, etc.; and the evening
by candle light in translating the Scriptures...Except I go out to
preach, which is often the case, I never deviate from this rule."
Three years before that he had been able to confute the Brahmans from
their own writings; in 1798 he quoted and translated the Rig Veda and
the Purana in reply to a request for an account of the beliefs of the
priesthood, apologising, however, with his usual self-depreciation:--"I
am just beginning to see for myself by reading the original Shasters."
In 1799 we find him reading the Mahabharata epic with the hope of
finding some allusion or fact which might enable him to equate Hindoo
chronology with reliable history, as Dr. John Wilson of Bombay and
James Prinsep did a generation later, by the discovery of the name of
Antiochus the Great in two of the edicts of Asoka, written on the
Girnar rock.
By September 1804 Carey had completed the first three years' course of
collegiate training in Sanskrit. The Governor-General summoned a
brilliant assembly to listen to the disputations and declamations of
the students who were passing out, and of their professors, in the
various Oriental languages. The new Government House, as it was still
called, having been completed only the year before at a cost of
£140,000, was the scene, in "the southern room on the marble floor,"
where, ever since, all through the century, the Sovereign's Viceroys
have received the homage of the tributary kings of our Indian empire.
There, from Dalhousie and Canning to Lawrence and Mayo, and their still
surviving successors, we have seen pageants and durbars more splendid,
and representing a wider extent of territory, from Yarkand to Bangkok,
than even the Sultanised Englishman as Sir James Mackintosh called
Wellesley, ever dreamed of in his most imperial aspirations. There
councils have ever since been held, and laws have been passed affecting
the weal of from two to three hundred millions of our fellow-subjects.
There, too, we have stood with Duff and Cotton, Ritchie and Outram,
representing the later University of Calcutta which Wellesley would
have anticipated. But we question if, ever since, the marble hall of
the Governor-General's palace has witnessed a sight more profoundly
significant than that of William Carey addressing the Marquis Wellesley
in Sanskrit, and in the presence of the future Duke of Wellington, in
such words as follow.
The seventy students, their governors, officers, and professors, rose
to their feet, when, at ten o'clock on Thursday the 20th of September
1804, His Excellency the Visitor entered the room, accompanied, as the
official gazette duly chronicles, by "the Honourable the Chief Justice,
the judges of the Supreme Court, the members of the Supreme Council,
the members of the Council of the College, Major-General Cameron,
Major-General the Honourable Arthur Wellesley, Major-General
Dowdeswell, and Solyman Aga, the envoy from Baghdad. All the principal
civil and military officers at the Presidency, and many of the British
inhabitants, were present on this occasion; and also many learned
natives."
After Romer had defended, in Hindostani, the thesis that the Sanskrit
is the parent language in India, and Swinton, in Persian, that the
poems of Hafiz are to be understood in a figurative or mystical sense,
there came a Bengali declamation by Tod senior on the position that the
translations of the best works extant in the Sanskrit with the popular
languages of India would promote the extension of science and
civilisation, opposed by Hayes; then Carey, as moderator, made an
appropriate Bengali speech. A similar disputation in Arabic and a
Sanskrit declamation followed, when Carey was called on to conclude
with a speech in Sanskrit. Two days after, at a second assemblage of
the same kind, followed by a state dinner. Lord Wellesley presented
the best students with degrees of merit inscribed on vellum in Oriental
characters, and delivered an oration, in which he specially
complimented the Sanskrit classes, urged more general attention to the
Bengali language, and expressed satisfaction that a successful
beginning had been made in the study of Marathi.
It was considered a dangerous experiment for a missionary, speaking in
Sanskrit, to avow himself such not only before the Governor-General in
official state but before the Hindoo and Mohammedan nobles who
surrounded him. We may be sure that Carey would not show less of his
Master's charity and wisdom than he had always striven to do. But the
necessity was the more laid on him that he should openly confess his
great calling, for he had told Fuller on Lord Wellesley's arrival he
would do so if it were possible. Buchanan, being quite as anxious to
bring the mission forward on this occasion, added much to the English
draft--"the whole of the flattery is his," wrote Carey to Fuller--and
sent it on to Lord Wellesley with apprehension. This answer came back
from the great Proconsul:--"I am much pleased with Mr. Carey's truly
original and excellent speech. I would not wish to have a word
altered. I esteem such a testimony from such a man a greater honour
than the applause of Courts and Parliaments."
"MY LORD, it is just that the language which has been first cultivated
under your auspices should primarily be employed in gratefully
acknowledging the benefit, and in speaking your praise. This ancient
language, which refused to disclose itself to the former Governors of
India, unlocks its treasures at your command, and enriches the world
with the history, learning, and science of a distant age. The rising
importance of our collegiate institution has never been more clearly
demonstrated than on the present occasion; and thousands of the learned
in distant nations will exult in this triumph of literature.
"What a singular exhibition has been this day presented to us! In
presence of the supreme Governor of India, and of its most learned and
illustrious characters, Asiatic and European, an assembly is convened,
in which no word of our native tongue is spoken, but public discourse
is maintained on interesting subjects in the languages of Asia. The
colloquial Hindostani, the classic Persian, the commercial Bengali, the
learned Arabic, and the primæval Sanskrit are spoken fluently, after
having been studied grammatically, by English youth. Did ever any
university in Europe, or any literary institution in any other age or
country, exhibit a scene so interesting as this? And what are the
circumstances of these youth? They are not students who prosecute a
dead language with uncertain purpose, impelled only by natural genius
or love of fame. But having been appointed to the important offices of
administering the government of the country in which these languages
are spoken, they apply their acquisitions immediately to useful
purpose; in distributing justice to the inhabitants; in transacting the
business of the state, revenual and commercial; and in maintaining
official intercourse with the people, in their own tongue, and not, as
hitherto, by an interpreter. The acquisitions of our students may be
appreciated by their affording to the suppliant native immediate access
to his principal; and by their elucidating the spirit of the
regulations of our Government by oral communication, and by written
explanations, varied according to the circumstances and capacities of
the people.
"The acquisitions of our students are appreciated at this moment by
those learned Asiatics now present in this assembly, some of them
strangers from distant provinces; who wonder every man to hear in his
own tongue important subjects discussed, and new and noble principles
asserted, by the youth of a foreign land. The literary proceedings of
this day amply repay all the solicitude, labour, and expense that have
been bestowed on this institution. If the expense had been a thousand
times greater, it would not have equalled the immensity of the
advantage, moral and political, that will ensue.
"I, now an old man, have lived for a long series of years among the
Hindoos. I have been in the habit of preaching to multitudes daily, of
discoursing with the Brahmans on every subject, and of superintending
schools for the instruction of the Hindoo youth. Their language is
nearly as familiar to me as my own. This close intercourse with the
natives for so long a period, and in different parts of our empire, has
afforded me opportunities of information not inferior to those which
have hitherto been presented to any other person. I may say indeed
that their manners, customs, habits, and sentiments are as obvious to
me as if I was myself a native. And knowing them as I do, and hearing
as I do their daily observations on our government, character, and
principles, I am warranted to say (and I deem it my duty to embrace the
public opportunity now afforded me of saying it) that the institution
of this college was wanting to complete the happiness of the natives
under our dominion; for this institution will break down that barrier
(our ignorance of their language) which has ever opposed the influence
of our laws and principles, and has despoiled our administration of its
energy and effect.
"Were the institution to cease from this moment, its salutary effects
would yet remain. Good has been done, which cannot be undone. Sources
of useful knowledge, moral instruction, and political utility have been
opened to the natives of India which can never be closed; and their
civil improvement, like the gradual civilisation of our own country,
will advance in progression for ages to come.
"One hundred original volumes in the Oriental languages and literature
will preserve for ever in Asia the name of the founder of this
institution. Nor are the examples frequent of a renown, possessing
such utility for its basis, or pervading such a vast portion of the
habitable globe. My lord, you have raised a monument of fame which no
length of time or reverse of fortune is able to destroy; not chiefly
because it is inscribed with Maratha and Mysore, with the trophies of
war and the emblems of victory, but because there are inscribed on it
the names of those learned youth who have obtained degrees of honour
for high proficiency in the Oriental tongues.
"These youth will rise in regular succession to the Government of this
country. They will extend the domain of British civilisation,
security, and happiness, by enlarging the bounds of Oriental literature
and thereby diffusing the spirit of Christian principles throughout the
nations of Asia. These youth, who have lived so long amongst us, whose
unwearied application to their studies we have all witnessed, whose
moral and exemplary conduct has, in so solemn a manner, been publicly
declared before this august assembly, on this day; and who, at the
moment of entering on the public service, enjoy the fame of possessing
qualities (rarely combined) constituting a reputation of threefold
strength for public men, genius, industry, and virtue;--these
illustrious scholars, my lord, the pride of their country, and the
pillars of this empire, will record your name in many a language and
secure your fame for ever. Your fame is already recorded in their
hearts. The whole body of youth of this service hail you as their
father and their friend. Your honour will ever be safe in their hands.
No revolution of opinion or change of circumstances can rob you of the
solid glory derived from the humane, just, liberal, and magnanimous
principles which have been embodied by your administration.
"To whatever situation the course of future events may call you, the
youth of this service will ever remain the pledges of the wisdom and
purity of your government. Your evening of life will be constantly
cheered with new testimonies of their reverence and affection, with new
proofs of the advantages of the education you have afforded them, and
with a demonstration of the numerous benefits, moral, religious, and
political, resulting from this institution;--benefits which will
consolidate the happiness of millions of Asia, with the glory and
welfare of our country."
The Court of Directors had never liked Lord Wellesley, and he had, in
common with Colebrooke, keenly wounded them by proposing a free trade
movement against their monopoly. They ordered that his favourite
college should be immediately abolished. He took good care so to
protract the operation as to give him time to call in the aid of the
Board of Control, which saved the institution, but confined it to the
teaching of languages to the civilians of the Bengal Presidency only.
The Directors, when thus overruled chiefly by Pitt, created a similar
college at Haileybury, which continued till the open competitive system
of 1854 swept that also away; and the Company itself soon followed, as
the march of events had made it an anachronism.
The first law professor at Haileybury was James Mackintosh, an Aberdeen
student who had leaped into the front rank of publicists and scholars
by his answer to Burke, in the Vindici[oe] Gallic[oe], and his famous defence
of M. Peltier accused of a libel on Napoleon Buonaparte. Knighted and
sent out to Bombay as its first recorder, Sir James Mackintosh became
the centre of scholarly society in Western India, as Sir William Jones
had been in Bengal. He was the friend of Robert Hall, the younger, who
was filling Carey's pulpit in Leicester, and he soon became the
admiring correspondent of Carey himself. His first act during his
seven years' residence in Bombay was to establish the "Literary
Society." He drew up a "Plan of a comparative vocabulary of Indian
languages," to be filled up by the officials of every district, like
that which Carey had long been elaborating for his own use as a
philologist and Bible translator. In his first address to the Literary
Society he thus eulogised the College of Fort William, though fresh
from a chair in its English rival, Haileybury:--"The original plan was
the most magnificent attempt ever made for the promotion of learning in
the East...Even in its present mutilated state we have seen, at the
last public exhibition, Sanskrit declamation by English youth, a
circumstance so extraordinary, that if it be followed by suitable
advances it will mark an epoch in the history of learning."
Carey continued till 1831 to be the most notable figure in the College
of Fort William. He was the centre of the learned natives whom it
attracted, as pundits and moonshees, as inquirers and visitors. His
own special pundit was the chief one, Mrityunjaya Vidyalankar, whom
Home has immortalised in Carey's portrait. In the college for more
than half the week, as in his study at Serampore, Carey exhausted three
pundits daily. His college-room was the centre of incessant literary
work, as his Serampore study was of Bible translation. When he
declared that the college staff had sent forth one hundred original
volumes in the Oriental languages and literature, he referred to the
grammars and dictionaries, the reading-books, compilations, and
editions prepared for the students by the professors and their native
assistants. But he contributed the largest share, and of all his
contributions the most laborious and valuable was this project of the
Bibliotheca Asiatica.
"24th July, 1805.--By the enclosed Gazette you will see that the
Asiatic Society and the College have agreed to allow us a yearly
stipend for translating Sanskrit works: this will maintain three
missionary stations, and we intend to apply it to that purpose. An
augmentation of my salary has been warmly recommended by the College
Council, but has not yet taken place, and as Lord Cornwallis is now
arrived and Lord Wellesley going away, it may not take place. If it
should, it will be a further assistance. The business of the
translation of Sanskrit works is as follows: About two years ago I
presented proposals (to the Council of the College) to print the
Sanskrit books at a fixed price, with a certain indemnity for 100
copies. The plan was thought too extensive by some, and was therefore
laid by. A few months ago Dr. Francis Buchanan came to me, by desire
of Marquis Wellesley, about the translation of his manuscripts. In the
course of conversation I mentioned the proposal I had made, of which he
much approved, and immediately communicated the matter to Sir John
Anstruther, who is president of the Asiatic Society. Sir John had then
been drawing out a proposal to Lord Wellesley to form a catalogue
raisonnè of the ancient Hindoo books, which he sent to me, and entering
warmly into my plan, desired that I would send in a set of proposals.
After some amendments it was agreed that the College of Fort William
and the Asiatic Society should subscribe in equal shares 300 rupees a
month to defray the current expenses, that we should undertake any work
approved of by them, and print the original with an English translation
on such paper and with such a type as they shall approve; the copy to
be ours. They have agreed to recommend the work to all the learned
bodies in Europe. I have recommended the Ramayana to begin with, it
being one of the most popular of all the Hindoo books accounted sacred.
The Veda are so excessively insipid that, had we begun with them, we
should have sickened the public at the outset. The Ramayana will
furnish the best account of Hindoo mythology that any one book will,
and has extravagancy enough to excite a wish to read it through."
In 1807 Carey became one of the most active members of the Bengal
Asiatic Society. His name at once appears as one of the Committee of
Papers. In the ninth volume of the Asiatic Researches for that year,
scholars were invited to communicate translations and descriptive
accounts of Asiatic books. Carey's edition of The Ramayana of
Valmeeki, in the original Sanskrit, with a prose translation and
explanatory notes, appeared from the Serampore press in three
successive quartos from 1806 to 1810. The translation was done by "Dr.
Carey and Joshua Marshman." Until Gorresio published his edition and
Italian translation of the whole poem this was the first and only
attempt to open the seal of the second great Sankrit epic to the
European world. In 1802 Carey had encouraged the publication at his
own press of translations of both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana into
Bengali. Carey's Ramayana excited a keen interest not only among the
learned of Europe, but among poetical students. Southey eagerly turned
to it for materials for his Curse of Kehama, in the notes to which he
makes long quotations from "the excellent and learned Baptist
missionaries of Serampore." Dean Milman, when professor of poetry in
Oxford, drew from the same storehouse many of the notes with which he
enriched his verse translations from both epics. A. W. von Schlegel,
the death of whose eldest brother at Madras early led him to Oriental
studies, published two books with a Latin translation. Mr. Ralph T. H.
Griffith most pleasantly opened the treasures of this epic to English
readers in his verse translations published since 1868. Carey's
translation has always been the more rare that the edition despatched
for sale in England was lost at sea, and only a few presentation copies
are extant, one of which is in the British Museum.
Carey's contributions to Sanskrit scholarship were not confined to what
he published or to what appeared under his own name. We are told by H.
H. Wilson that he had prepared for the press translations of treatises
on the metaphysical system called Sankhya. "It was not in Dr. Carey's
nature to volunteer a display of his erudition, and the literary
labours already adverted to arose in a great measure out of his
connection with the college of Calcutta, or were suggested to him by
those whose authority he respected, and to whose wishes he thought it
incumbent upon him to attend. It may be added that Dr. Carey spoke
Sanskrit with fluency and correctness."
He edited for the college the Sanskrit text of the Hitopadesa, from six
MSS. recensions of this the first revelation to Europe of the fountain
of Aryan folk-tales, of the original of Pilpay's Fables.[15] H. H.
Wilson remarks that the errors are not more than might have been
expected from the variations and defects of the manuscripts and the
novelty of the task, for this was the first Sanskrit book ever printed
in the Devanagari character. To this famous work Carey added an
abridgment of the prose Adventures of Ten Princes (the Dasa Kumara
Carita), and of Bhartri-hari's Apophthegms. Colebrooke records his
debt to Carey for carrying through the Serampore press the Sanskrit
dictionary of Amara Sinha, the oldest native lexicographer, with an
English interpretation and annotations. But the magnum opus of Carey
was what in 1811 he described as A Universal Dictionary of the Oriental
Languages, derived from the Sanskrit, of which that language is to be
the groundwork. The object for which he had been long collecting the
materials of this mighty work was the assisting of "Biblical students
to correct the translation of the Bible in the Oriental languages after
we are dead."
Through the College of Fort William during thirty long years Carey
influenced the ablest men in the Bengal Civil Service, and not a few in
Madras and Bombay. "The college must stand or the empire must fall,"
its founder had written to his friends in the Government, so convinced
was he that only thus could proper men be trained for the public
service and the welfare of our native subjects be secured. How right he
was Carey's experience proved. The young civilians turned out after
the first three years' course introduced that new era in the
administration of India which has converted traders into statesmen and
filibusters into soldier-politicals, so that the East Indian services
stand alone in the history of the administration of imperial
dependencies for spotless integrity and high average ability. Contrast
with the work of these men, from the days of Wellesley, the first
Minto, and Dalhousie, from the time of Canning to Lawrence and the
second Minto, the provincial administration of imperial Rome, of Spain
and Portugal at their best, of even the Netherlands and France. For a
whole generation of thirty years the civilians who studied Sanskrit,
Bengali, and Marathi came daily under the gentle spell of Carey, who,
though he had failed to keep the village school of Moulton in order,
manifested the learning and the modesty, the efficiency and the
geniality, which won the affectionate admiration of his students in
Calcutta.
A glance at the register of the college for its first five years
reveals such men as these among his best students. The first Bengali
prizeman of Carey was W. Butterworth Bayley, whose long career of
blameless uprightness and marked ability culminated in the temporary
seat of Governor-General, and who was followed in the service by a son
worthy of him. The second was that Brian H. Hodgson who, when Resident
of Nepal, of all his contemporaries won for himself the greatest
reputation as a scholar, who fought side by side with the Serampore
brotherhood the battle of the vernaculars of the people. Charles,
afterwards Lord Metcalfe, had been the first student to enter the
college. He was on its Persian side, and he learned while still under
its discipline that "humility, patience, and obedience to the divine
will" which unostentatiously marked his brilliant life and soothed his
spirit in the agonies of a fatal disease. He and Bayley were
inseparable. Of the first set, too, were Richard Jenkins, who was to
leave his mark on history as Nagpoor Resident and author of the Report
of 1826; and Romer, who rose to be Governor of Bombay for a time. In
those early years the two Birds passed through the classes--Robert
Mertins Bird, who was to found the great land revenue school of
Hindostan; and Wilberforce Bird, who governed India while Lord
Ellenborough played at soldiers, and to whom the legal suppression of
slavery in Southern Asia is due. Names of men second to those, such as
Elliot and Thackeray, Hamilton and Martin, the Shakespeares and
Plowdens, the Moneys, the Rosses and Keenes, crowd the honour lists.
One of the last to enjoy the advantages of the college before its
abolition was John Lawrence, who used to confess that he was never good
at languages, but whose vigorous Hindostani made many an ill-doing Raja
tremble, while his homely conversation, interspersed with jokes,
encouraged the toiling ryot.
These, and men like these, sat at the feet of Carey, where they learned
not only to be scholars but to treat the natives kindly, and--some of
them--even as brethren in Christ. Then from teaching the future rulers
of the East, the missionary-professor turned to his Bengali preaching
and his Benevolent Institution, to his visits to the prisoners and his
intercourse with the British soldiers in Fort William. And when the
four days' work in Calcutta was over, the early tide bore him swiftly
up the Hoogli to the study where, for the rest of the week, he gave
himself to the translation of the Bible into the languages of the
people and of their leaders.