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Brian Houghton Hodgson (February 1, 1800 – May 23, 1894 [1] ) was an early naturalist and ethnologist working in British India where he was an English civil servant.
1 Life and career
1.1 Educational reform
1.2 Ornithology and natural history
2 Return to England
3 Notes
Life and career
Hodgson was born at Prestbury, Cheshire. 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 studied the Nepalese people, producing a number
of papers on their languages, literature and religion.
Educational reform
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.
No one has more earnestly urged the duty of communicating European knowledge to the natives than Mr. Hodgson ; no one has more powerfully shown the importance of employing the vernacular languages for accomplishing that object; no one has more eloquently illustrated the necessity of conciliating the learned and of making them our coadjutors in the great work of a nation's regeneration.
– Third Report on Education in Bengal, p. 200 (1838)
Ornithology and natural history
Hodgon studied all aspects of natural history around him including
material from Nepal, Sikkim and Bengal. He amassed a large collection of
birds and mammal skins which he later donated to the British Museum. He
discovered a new species of antelope which was named after him, the Tibetan
Antelope Pantholops hodgsonii. He also discovered 39 species of mammals
and 124 species of birds which had not been described previously, 79 of
the bird species were described himself. The zoological collections presented
to the British Museum by Hodgson in 1843 and 1858 comprised of 10,499 specimens.
In addition to these, the collection also included an enormous number of
drawings and coloured sketches of Indian animals by native artists under
his supervision. Most of these were subsequently transferred to the Zoological
Society of London.
Allan Octavian Hume said of him:
Mr. Hodgson's mind was many-sided, and his work extended into many fields
of which I have little knowledge. Indeed of all the many subjects which,
at various times, engaged his attention, there is only one with which I
am well acquainted and in regard to his researches in which I am at all
competent to speak. I refer of course to Indian Ornithology, and extensive
as were his labours in this field, they absorbed, I believe, only a minor
portion of his intellectual activities. Moreover his opportunities in this
direction were somewhat circumscribed, for Nepal and Sikkim were the only
provinces in our vast empire whose birds he was able to study in life for
any considerable period. Yet from these two comparatively small provinces
he added fully a hundred and fifty good new species to the Avifauna of
the British Asian Empire, and few and far between have been the new species
subsequently discovered within the limits he explored.
But this detection and description of previously unknown species was
only the smaller portion of his contributions to Indian Ornithology. He
trained Indian artists to paint birds with extreme accuracy from a scientific
point of view, and under his careful supervision admirable large-scale
pictures were produced, not only of all the new species above referred
to, but also of several hundred other already recorded ones, and in many
cases of their nests and eggs also. These were continually accompanied
by exact, life-size, pencil drawings of the bills, nasal orifices, legs,
feet, and claws (the scutellation of the tarsi and toes being reproduced
with photographic accuracy and minuteness), and of the arrangement of the
feathers in crests, wings, and tails. Then on the backs of the plates was
preserved an elaborate record of the colours of the irides, bare facial
skin, wattles, legs, and feet, as well as detailed measurements, all taken
from fresh and numerous specimens, of males, females, and young of each
species, and over and above all this, invaluable notes as to food (ascertained
by dissection), nidification and eggs, station, habits, constituting as
a whole materials for a life-history of many hundred species such as I
believe no one ornithologist had ever previously garnered. ...
Hodgson combined much of Blyth's talent for classification with much
of Jerdon's habit of persevering personal observation, and excelled the
latter in literary gifts and minute and exact research. But with Hodgson
ornithology was only a pastime or at best a parergon, and humble a branch
of science as is ornithology, it is yet like all other branches a jealous
mistress demanding an undivided allegiance ; and hence with, I think, on
the whole, higher qualifications, he exercised practically somewhat less
influence on ornithological evolution than either of his great contemporaries.
...
Charles Darwin in his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication when discussing the origin of the domestic dog, mentions that Hodgson succeeded in taming the young of the Canis primaevus, an Indian wild dog, and in making them as fond of him and as intelligent as ordinary clogs. Darwin was also indebted to Hodgson's writings for information on the occurrence of dew-claws in the Tibetan mastiff, and for other details of variations which he observed in the cattle, sheep, and goats of India.
Hodgsonia is a genus of cucurbits named after Hodgson. His close friend, Sir Joseph Hooker named a species of Rhododendron after him Rhododendron hodgsoni. Several species of bird including Prinia hodgsonii are named after him.
Return to England
Hodgson resigned in 1844 and returned to England for a short period.
In 1845 he settled in Darjeeling and continued his studies of the peoples
of northern India. In 1858 he again returned to England and settled in
the Cotswolds. He died at Alderley.
Notes
^ May 28, 1894 According to M. A. Smith in the Fauna of British India.
1941
Hodgson Brian Houghton
(1800-1894)
Brian Houghton Hodgson (Prestbury, 1º febbraio 1800 – Alderley, 23 maggio 1894) è stato un etnologo, naturalista e impiegato statale inglese.
Indice
1 Cenni biografici
2 Etnologia ed antropologia
3 Ornitologia e scienze naturali
4 Riconoscimenti
5 Pubblicazioni
6 Note
7 Bibliografia
Cenni biografici
Alla fine del 1815, per fare fronte al dissesto economico del padre,
il giovane Hodgson entrò nella Compagnia Inglese delle Indie Orientali.[1]
A diciassette anni, dopo aver completato la sua istruzione all'East India
Company College[2], dove dimostrò una spiccata attitudine per le
lingue, fu inviato in India con la qualifica di scrittore e, successivamente
nel 1819, a Katmandu, in Nepal, nella veste di vice-commissario (Assistant
Commissioner). Hodgson continuò la sua carriera nella compagnia
fino a rivestirne il ruolo di rappresentante ufficiale (British Resident)
per il Nepal nel 1833.
Lasciò il Nepal nel 1844 e fece ritorno in Inghilterra per un breve periodo. Nel 1845 si stabilì nel Darjeeling, nel Bengala Occidentale, dove continuò i suoi studi sui popoli dell'India settentrionale. Nel 1858 tornò nuovamente in Inghilterra e si stabilì sulle Cotswolds. Morì ad Alderley nel 1894.
Etnologia ed antropologia
Hodgson mostrò un enorme interesse per la cultura delle popolazioni
himalayane. Influenzato da autori quali Sir William Jones, Friedrich Schlegel,
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach e James Cowles Prichard, ne studiò a
fondo la lingua, la letteratura e la religione sulla base della convinzione
che le affinità etnologiche tra le diverse popolazioni potessero
essere identificate su base linguistica. Sulla scorta di questi studi,
formulo l'ipotesi che le popolazioni dell'Himalaya non fossero di origine
indo-europea.[3]
Ornitologia e scienze naturali
Appassionato zoologo, Hodgson studiò estensivamente la fauna
delle regioni del Nepal, del Sikkim e del Bengala. Nel corso degli anni,
mise assieme una grande collezione di uccelli e pelli di mammiferi che
successivamente donò al British Museum. Tra i suoi contributi alla
zoologia, vi è la scoperta di una nuova specie di antilope, l'antilope
tibetana, che in suo onore fu chiamata Pantholops hodgsonii. Scoprì
anche 39 specie di mammiferi e 124 specie di uccelli (tra cui la Aethopyga
saturata), 79 delle quali furono descritte da lui stesso.
Le collezioni zoologiche presentate da Hodgson al British Museum nel 1843 e nel 1858 comprendevano 10.499 esemplari. Le due collezioni includevano anche un gran numero di disegni e schizzi colorati di animali indiani, eseguiti sotto la sua supervisione dagli artisti del posto, la maggior parte dei quali venne trasferita in seguito alla Zoological Society of London.
Riconoscimenti
Nel 1853, i botanici inglese Joseph Dalton Hooker e Thomas Thomson,
battezzarono in suo onore un genere di zucca (Hodgsonia). Sir Joseph Hooker
gli intitolò una specie di Rhododendron (Rhododendron hodgsoni).
Molte specie di uccelli, inclusa Prinia hodgsonii, sono intitolate a suo
nome.
Pubblicazioni
On the colonization of the Himalaya by Europeans (1856)
On the Aborigines of India: the Kocch, Bodo and Dhimal Tribes (1847)
Note
^ Waterhouse, David (Ed.) (2004). The origins of Himalayan studies.
Routledge.
^ L'East India Company College fu un istituto scolastico inglese attivo
tra il 1806 e il 1858. Situato nei pressi di Hertford, in Inghilterra,
questo istituto provvedeva alla formazione generale e professionale dei
dipendenti più giovani della Compagnia Inglese delle Indie Orientali.
^ Arnold, David (2004). Race, place and bodily difference in early
nineteenth-century India. Historical Research. 77(196):254-273.
Bibliografia
Smith, M. A. (1941). Fauna of British India. Reptilia and Amphibia.
Mearns Barbara e Richard. Biographies for Birdwatchers ISBN 0-12-487422-3
Lydekker, Richard (1902). Some famous Anglo-Indian naturalists of the
Nineteenth century. In Indian Review Vol.3:221-226