Brian Houghton Hodgson

Brian Houghton Hodgson (1 February 1800 or more likely 1801 – 23 May 1894) was a pioneer naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident. He described numerous species of birds and mammals from the Himalayas, and several birds were named after him by others such as Edward Blyth. He was a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and wrote extensively on a range of topics relating to linguistics and religion. He was an opponent of the British proposal to introduce English as the official medium of instruction in Indian schools.

Hodgson was the second of seven children born at Lower Beech, Prestbury, Cheshire to Brian (or Bryan) Hodgson (1766-1858) and Catherine (1775?-1851). His father lost money in a bad bank investment and had to sell their home at Lower beech. A great-aunt married to Beilby Porteus, the bishop of London, helped them but the financial difficulties were great. Hodgsons father worked as a warden of the Martello towers and in 1820 barrack-master at Canterbury. Brian (the son) studied at Macclesfield grammar school until 1814 and the next two years at Richmond under the tutelage of Daniel Delafosse. He was nominated for the Bengal civil service by an East India Company director, James Pattison. 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 (1818) he travelled to India as a writer in the British East India Company. His talent for languages such as Sanskrit and especially Persian was to prove useful for his career. He was posted as Assistant Commissioner in the Kumaon region during 1819-20 reporting to George William Traill. The Kumaon region had been annexed from Nepal and in 1820 he was made assistant to the resident in Nepal but he took up a position of acting deputy secretary in the Persian department of the Foreign office in Calcutta. Ill health made him prefer to go back into the hills of Nepal. He took up position in 1824 as postmaster and later assistant resident in 1825. In January 1833 he became the British Resident at Kathmandu. He continued to suffer from ill health and gave up meat and alcohol in 1837. He studied the Nepalese people, producing a number of papers on their languages, literature and religion. In 1853 he made a brief visit to England and Holland. He married Anne Scott in the British Embassy at the Hague. She died in 1868. In 1870 he married Susan Townshend of Derry.

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