Everything about Charles Wilkins totally explained
Sir Charles Wilkins (
1749 –
1836), was an
English typographer and
Orientalist, notable as the first translator of
Bhagavad Gita into English, and as the creator of the first
Devanagari typeface.
He was born at
Frome in
Somerset in 1749, and trained as a printer. In 1770 he went to
India as a printer and writer in the
East India Company's service. His facility with language allowed him to quickly learn Persian and Bengali. He was closely involved in the design of the first type for printing Bengali, publishing the first typeset book in the language, earning himself the name “the
Caxton of India”. He also designed type for publications of books in Persian. In 1781 he was appointed as translator of Persian and Bengali to the Commissioner of Revenue and as superintendent of the Company’s press. He successfully translated a Royal inscription in Kutila characters, which were hitherto indecipherable.
In 1784 Wilkins helped
William Jones establish the
Asiatic Society of Bengal, moving to
Varanasi, where he studied Sanskrit under Kalinatha, a Brahmin pandit. At this period he began work on his translation of the
Mahabarata, securing strong support for his activities from the governor of British India,
Warren Hastings. Though he never completed the translation, portions were later published. The most important was his version of the Gita, published in 1785 as
Bhagvat-geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon (London: Nourse, 1785).
His translation of the Gita was itself soon translated into French (1787) and German (1802). It proved to be a major influence on
Romantic literature and on European perception of Hindu philosophy.
William Blake later celebrated the publication in his picture
The Bramins, exhibited in 1809, which depicted Wilkins and Brahmin scholars working on the translation.
With Hastings’ departure from India, Wilkins lost his main patron. He returned to England in 1786, where he married Elizabeth Keeble. In 1787 Wilkins followed the Gita with his translation of
The Heetopades of Veeshnoo-Sarma, in a Series of Connected Fables, Interspersed with Moral, Prudential and Political Maxims (Bath: 1787). He was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society in 1788. In 1801 he became
librarian to the East India Company, and examiner at
Haileybury when a college was established there in 1805. During these years he devoted himself to the creation of a font for Devanagari, the “divine script”. In 1808 he published his ‘’Grammar of the Sanskrita Language’’. In 1833 he was
knighted in recognition of his services to Oriental scholarship, and died in London at the age of 86.
In addition to his own translations and type designs, Wilkins published a new edition of
John Wilkins Richardson's
Persian and Arabic dictionary, and a catalogue of the manuscripts collected by Sir William Jones, who acknowledged his indebtedness to Wilkins.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Charles Wilkins'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://charles_wilkins.totallyexplained.com">Charles Wilkins Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
