Hunter, Sir William Wilson
Sir William Wilson Hunter, KCSI [1], CIE [2] (15 July 1840 – 6 February 1900) was British historian, statistician, a compiler and a member of the Indian Civil Service, who later became Vice President of Royal Asiatic Society [3].
[edit] Early life and education
William Wilson Hunter was born on 15 July 1840 in Glasgow, Scotland, to Andrew Galloway Hunter, a Glasgow manufacturer. He was the second son, among his fathers three sons. He started his education in 1854 at the 'Quaker Seminary' at Queenswood, Hampshire, after a year he joined, the Glasgow Academy [4].
He was educated at Glasgow University (BA 1860), Paris and Bonn, acquiring a knowledge of Sanskrit, LL.D. [2], before passing first in the final examination for the Indian Civil Service in 1862.
[edit] Career
He reached Bengal Presidency in November 1862 and was appointed assistant magistrate and collector of Birbhum, in the lower provinces of Bengal, where he began collecting local traditions and records, which formed the materials for his publication, entitled The Annals of Rural Bengal, a book which did much to stimulate public interest in the details of Indian administration. He also compiled A Comparative Dictionary of the Non-Aryan Languages of India, a glossary of dialects based mainly upon the collections of Brian Houghton Hodgson, which testifies to the industry of the writer but contains much immature philological speculation. In 1872 he brought out two attractive volumes on the province of Orissa and its far-famed temple of Jagannath.
In 1869 Lord Mayo asked Hunter to submit a scheme for a comprehensive statistical survey of British India. The work involved the compilation of a number of local gazetteers, in various stages of progress, and their consolidation in a condensed form upon a single and uniform plan. The conception was worthy of the gigantic projects formed by Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair at the close of the 18th century, and the fact that it was successfully carried through between 1869 and 1881 was owing mainly to the energy and determination of Hunter.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India, William Wilson Hunter's most known work, on which he started working in 1869.
The early period of his undertaking was devoted to a series of tours which took him into every corner of India. He himself undertook the supervision of the statistical accounts of Bengal (20 vols, 1875–1877) and of Assam (2 vols., 1879). The various statistical accounts, when completed, comprised no fewer than 128 volumes. The immense task, of condensing this mass of material proceeded concurrently with their compilation, an administrative feat which enabled The Imperial Gazetteer of India to appear in 9 volumes in 1881 (2nd ed., 14 vols, 1885–1887; 3rd ed., 26 vols, including atlas, 1908).
Hunter adopted a transliteration of vernacular place-names, by which means the correct pronunciation is ordinarily indicated; but hardly sufficient allowance was made for old spellings consecrated by history and long usage. Hunter's own article on India was published in 1880 as A Brief History of the Indian Peoples, and has been widely translated and utilized in Indian schools. A revised form was issued in 1895, under the title of The Indian Empire: its People, History and Products.
In 1882 Hunter, as a member of the governor-general's council, presided over the commission on Indian Education; in 1886 he was elected vice-chancellor of the University of Calcutta.
In 1887 he retired from the service, was created KCSI, and settled at Oaken Holt, near Oxford. He arranged with the Clarendon Press to publish a series of Rulers of India, to which he himself contributed volumes on Dalhousie (1890) and Mayo (1892). He had previously, in 1875, written an official Life of Lord Mayo, in two volumes. He also wrote a weekly article on Indian affairs for The Times.
But the great task to which he applied himself on his settlement in England was a history upon a large scale of the British Dominion in India, two volumes of which only had appeared when he died, carrying the reader barely down to 1700. He was much hindered by the confused state of his materials, a portion of which he arranged and published in 1894 as Bengal Manuscript Records, in three volumes. A delightful story, The Old Missionary (1895), and The Thackerays in India (1897), a gossipy volume which appeals to all readers of The Newcomes, may be regarded as the relaxations of an Anglo-Indian amid the stress of severer studies.
In the winter of 1898–1899, in consequence of the fatigue incurred in a journey to the Caspian and back, on a visit to the sick-bed of one of his two sons, Hunter was stricken down by a severe attack of influenza, which affected his heart. He died at Oaken Holt on the 6th of February 1900.
[edit] Bibliography
- Annals of Rural Bengal, Published by Smith, Elder & co, 1870.
- The Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1881, Vol 1–26 [5]
- Hunter, William Wilson, Sir (1893). A Brief history of the Indian peoples (20 ed.). Oxford : Clarendon Press. http://www.archive.org/stream/briefhistoryindi00hunt#page/n7/mode/2up.
- A Brief History of the Indian Peoples, Oxford. 1897. ISBN 8120618815.
- Hunter, William Wilson, Sir (1907). History of India: From the first European settlements to the founding of the English East India company (Vol. 6). London, Grolier society. http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofindia06jackuoft#page/n9/mode/2up.
- Hunter, William Wilson, Sir (1906). History of India: The European struggle for Indian supremacy in the seventeenth century (Vol. 7). London, Grolier society. http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofindia07jackuoft#page/n9/mode/2up.
- A Statistical Account of Assam, (2 Vols), (Ist edition 1879), 1998, Spectrum Publications. ISBN 818531991X.
- The Indian Musalmans, (Ist edition 1871), 2002, Rupa & Co. ISBN 8171676901.
- The Marquess of Dalhousie, (Ist edition 1894), 2007, Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 1432657321.
- State Education for the People in America, Europe, India, and Australia: With Papers on the Education of Women, Technical Instruction, and Payment by Results. Published by C. W. Bardeen, 1895.
- The Thackerays in India and Some Calcutta Graves. Henry Frowde, London, 1897. ISBN 1299037992.
- Orissa, 2002, Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 1402189605.[6]
[edit] Further reading
[edit] References
- Sir William Wilson Hunter
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Sir William Wilson Hunter, K. C. S. I., C. I. E. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Mar., 1900), pp. 289–290
[edit] External links
| Persondata |
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Hunter, William Wilson |
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| Date of birth |
15 July 1840 |
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| Date of death |
6 February 1900 |
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Works written by or about 
