ISBN: 9781156263938

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: … More...

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Brian Houghton Hodgson (1 February 1800 or 1801 23 May 1894) was an early naturalist and ethnologist working in British India and Nepal where he was an English civil servant. Hodgson was born at Lower Beech, Prestbury, Cheshire. His father had lost money in bad bank investment and this resulted in his Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Brian Houghton Hodgson (1 February 1800 or 1801 23 May 1894) was an early naturalist and ethnologist working in British India and Nepal where he was an English civil servant. Hodgson was born at Lower Beech, Prestbury, Cheshire. His father had lost money in bad bank investment and this resulted in his need to join the East India Company. He went to study at Haileybury and showed an aptitude for languages. An early influence was Thomas Malthus who was a family friend and a staff member at Hailebury. At the end of his first term (May 1816) he obtained a prize for Bengali. He graduated from Haileybury with a gold medal. At the age of seventeen he travelled to India as a writer in the British East India Company. He was sent to Kathmandu in Nepal as Assistant Commissioner in 1819, becoming British Resident in 1833. He travelled in the Kumaon region during 1819-20 He studied the Nepalese people, producing a number of papers on their languages, literature and religion. Hodgson had a keen interest in the culture of the people of the Himalayan regions. He believed that racial affinities could be identified on the basis of linguistics and he was influenced by the works of Sir William Jones, Friedrich Schlegel, Blumenbach and J.C. Prichard. From his studies he believed that the aboriginal populations of the Himalayas were not Aryans or Caucasians, but a race he termed as the Tamulian, who he claimed were unique to India. During his service in India, he was a strong opponent of Macaulay and a proponent of education in the local languages and was opposed to the use of English as a medium of instruction. From 1855 to 1859 William Adam, Brian Houghton Hodgson, Frederick Shore and William Campbell wrote against Macaulay's idea of education in the English me. More: Books, , People-From-Prestbury-Cheshire~~Books-LLC, , , , , , , , , , General Books LLC<