James Prinsep

James Prinsep in medal cast circa 1840. National Portrait Gallery (London)

James Prinsep (20 August 1799 – 22 April 1840) was an Anglo-Indian scholar and antiquary. He was the seventh son of John Prinsep, a wealthy East India merchant and Member of Parliament. From 1832 to 1838 he was assay-master in the India Government Mint, Kolkata, Apart from architectural work (chiefly at Benares), his leisure was devoted to Indian inscriptions and numismatics. He is most noted as a philologist for fully deciphering and translating the rock edicts of Asoka from Brāhmī script.^[1]

Assay Master

He arrived in Calcutta on September 15, 1819 and at the age of twenty, joined the service of the East India Company as Assay Master at the Government mint in Banares under Dr. Horace Hayman Wilson, the distinguished Sanscrit Scholar. He ultimately became assay-master at the main Government mint at Calcutta in 1832, succeeding Dr. Wilson, whom he likewise succeeded as secretary of the Asiatic Society. During James Prinsep's years in the mint he reformed weights and measures, introduced a uniform coinage and devised a balance so delicate as to indicate the three-thousandth part of a grain (.1944 mg).^[2]

Architect

Prinsep was indeed a many-sided genius. He studied architecture under the gifted but eccentric Augustus Pugin. Though an eye-affection prevented him from initially following that profession, he was an excellent architect. His eyesight later being completely restored, James Prinsep was able to undertake many architectural and engineering tasks of importance in addition to his work at the Mints at Calcutta and Benares. While at Benares, he completed the new mint building according to his own plan and also built a church. He also rebuilt the famous minarets of Arungzeb and built a fine bridge over the Karamansa River. At Calcutta he was on the committee for municipal improvements and distinguished himself by improving the city drainage system by constructing a tunnel connecting the Hooghly River with the Sunderbans Mangrove forest.^[1]

Asiatic Society secretary

He succeeded to the Secretaryship of the Asiatic Society on H. H. Wilson's return to England and started his own journal in 1832: "The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal". Prinsep appealed to all those officers who had 'opportunities of forming collections in the upper provinces' for more coins and inscriptions. He was endowed with the rare capacity of instilling some of his own enthusiasm and ardour into others. Prinsep's appeal was enormously successful. He was in no time flooded with coins and inscriptions — materials which changed the very trend of the Indian antiquarian researches.^[2]

Numismatist

The founder of the Indo-Greek Kingdom Demetrius I of Bactria (205–171 BCE), wearing the scalp of an elephant, symbol of his conquest of India

Appropriately for the assay-master of the Calcutta mint, coins always remained Prinsep's first interest. He interpreted Bactrian and Kushan coins. Also all the indigenous Indian series coins, including the punch-marked ones — indeed the term was coined by Prinsep himself — the series of the autonomous republics, the Gupta series and so on. It was Prinsep who propounded the theory of the descent of the Gupta coins from the Kushan prototypes and this discussion also brought him to the question of the different stages in the technique of coin manufacture in India. He recognised the three stages represented by the punch-marked, the die-struck and the cast coins.^[2]

Brahmi script philologist

Prinsep used bilingual Indo-Greek coins to decipher Kharoshthi. Obverse and reverse legends in Greek "BASILEOS SOTĒROS MENANDROY" and Kharosthi "MAHARAJA TRATASA MENADRASA": "Of The Saviour King Menander".

But the crowning achievement of all his labours over the decade was the decipherment of the Brahmi script and the consequent clearing up of many of the mysteries of ancient Indian history. Thus more than forty years after 1788, Sir William Jones's hope was realised when Prinsep was able to produce the key to unlock all the remaining secrets of the Brahmi script. However, it is only fair to remember that much of the Brahmi script had already been deciphered before the final achievement of Prinsep. Prinsep followed clues provided by others regarding the decipherment of Kharosthi and after some mistaken readings he was finally able, before his departure, to find the values of nineteen single letters and one compound of Kharosthi as well. The idea of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum also goes back to the time of Prinsep and to his idea.^[2]

Legacy

James Prinsep (1799–1840). Note Ganesh and Buddha idols to his left and stone tablets with Brāhmi script to his right.

Prinsep literally worked himself to death. Desperately ill as he became, he had to leave unexpectedly in the midst of his labours and hence much of his work remained unfinished. As the new editor of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal commented: '... collectors in all parts of India were in the habit of submitting to his inspection whatever they lighted upon as unusual, and sought his reading and interpretation — but the study and exertions required were too severe for the climate of India, and the Editor's robust constitution sank at last under the incessant labour...' Yet before taking leave he had managed to set forth the main lines of Indian archaeological research for at least the next fifty years. Returning to England in 1838 in broken health, he died in London of softening of the brain, on April 22, 1840 ^[1].

Prinsep's Ghat, an archway on the bank of the Hooghly River, was erected to his memory by the citizens of Calcutta. It is now the venue of the Prinsep Ghat Cultural Festival, a unique cultural event organised by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) in collaboration with corporate sponsors.

His research and writing were not confined to India. Prinsep also delved into the early history of Afghanistan, producing several works that touched on archaeological finds in that country. After James Prinsep's death his brother Henry Thoby Prinsep published in 1844 a volume exploring the numismatist's work in Afghanistan.^[3]

Gallery

Lithograph of Kupuldhara Tulao, Benares, 1834.	A lithograph by James Prinsep of Dr. William Bland's transcription of the inscription on the Singapore Stone, 1837.	Bharata Natyam at the Prinsep Festival 2008
Manipuri Dance at the Prinsep Festival 2008

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal at Internet Archive