Digital Rare Book:
A Catalogue of South Indian Sanskrit Manuscripts : Especially those of the Whish collection belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
Compiled by Moriz Winternitz (1863-1937)
Appendix by Frederick William Thomas (1867-1956)
Published by Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland - 1902

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These manuscripts came from the collection of Charles M. Whish (1795-1833), an East India Company scholar-administrator who worked in South India from 1812 until his death in 1833.

In 1902 the Society published 'A catalogue of South Indian Sanskrit manuscripts' (especially those of the Whish collection) belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, compiled by Moriz Winternitz. The manuscripts cover a wide range of subjects and genres, such as Vedic philosophy, classical literature, grammar, the epics, the puranas, astronomy, and astrology. Winternitz remarks that although they are “not distinguished by great age, there are many rare and valuable MSS. among them”. Reflecting his own interests, he then highlights the texts from the distinct South Indian recension of the Mahabharata as being perhaps the most important group within the collection.

Whish himself had a particular interest in the development of mathematics in Kerala. His paper ‘On the Hindú Quadrature of the Circle, and the Infinite Series of the Proportion of the Circumference to the Diameter Exhibited in the Four Sástras, the Tantra Sangraham, Yucti Bháshá, Carana Padhati, and Sadratnamála’ was published posthumously in the Transactions of the RAS in 1834. He argued that Indian mathematicians, independently of Europeans, had discovered ways of approximating the value of π (pi), and that the Keralan mathematician Madhava had by around 1400 CE developed powerful solutions to problems which Europeans were only able to solve over 200 years later, with the discovery of calculus in the mid-seventeenth century.
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Essay:
CHARLES WHISH AT CALICUT, AND THE MADHAVA SCHOOL

The man who discovered the medieval Madhava school of Kerala Mathematics

Whish was certainly some character. At an age when many others toyed around with other exciting facets of human life, Whish studied Indian languages, excelled in Sanskrit and Malayalam, wrote and published the very first book ever written on Malayalam grammar, studied various Hindu scriptures, the Malabar Zodiac, their alphabetical notations of numerals and finally perused the complicated works of mathematics scholars. Remember now that we are talking about a person who predated Gundert and Logan, who incidentally spent entire days as an Assistant criminal judge in Calicut, just a few decades after the English (We are now talking about the 1820-1834 time frame) had finally got a foothold in India. He cultivated friendships with the learned people in Calicut and Malabar and understood not only their psyche, but also got close enough to understand the religious scriptures and astronomy and astrological methods. By the age of 38, the man was lost to this world, dying prematurely. Surely his friends would have remarked then that he had somehow upset the gods. I would however say that he was not yet ready for this world. His studies were alas, lost again to the world, suppressed so to say by lesser human beings envious of the painstaking and revolutionary work, for over 100 years, till finally CT Rajagpal and Mukunda Marar took it up in 1940. Now there are so many books and papers on the subject broadly termed as the Madhava School, the Kerala school of Mathematics or the Nila School.

Whish was the person who actually brought it all to light and tried hard to tell people how important that discovery was. As that information collected dust in the Asiatic society’s binders, people studied Newton’s theories of fluxions and Leibniz’s discoveries, heralding the subject which we know as calculus, today. It took another 150 years after Newton’s methods were burned into the brains of Math students that the discoveries and Calculus studies of mathematicians like Madhava and his students who predated Newton, came to light. Even today, as the work of Kerala School is finally gaining acceptance, the man who discovered it, Charles Whish is only mentioned in passing. Barring a scholarly paper by Sarma, Bhat, Pai and Ramasubramaniam, there are only passing mentions about this East India Company official who led such a varied and interesting, but short life in Malabar. I don’t think he missed a single day, or hour of his life, so busy was his life, so valuable his contributions to the world.

A remarkable young man, Charles was born to Martin and Harriet in 1794. It must have been tough, for the young lad was sandwiched right in the center between 7 elder to him and 7 younger. Martin worked for the excise department, but seems to have come to India sometime for it is said that Charles was born in India. Nevertheless Charles went to England for his studies, graduating from the newly established East India College close to London as a writer (administrator). He would have studied law, economics of course, and math from Dealtrey (the author of the book on fluxions) and Bewick Bridge. Literature and oriental languages would have been dealt with briefly. Whish passed the College examinations 'with credit' in 1810, aged 15 and in the following term won prizes for Persian and Hindustani. He was soon shipped off to India and straightaway went to the College of Fort St George in Madras (aka madras school) established for the purpose of training and graduating new EIC officers in Indian languages and publishing text books for that purpose. Whish was involved with these activities for the next few years and we find that he published the first Malayalam Grammar text book.

The school intended to pass out a batch of junior native civil officers from the college and work closely with the so called Dravidian ideas of FW Ellis, its founder. “Before the college was established, a junior civil servant on his arrival at Madras, was at once nominated to a situation, (generally in the interior) whence he was periodically summoned to the Presidency, for examination in the native languages, by a committee annually appointed. It was one of those committees which suggested the establishment of the college, in order to supply the want of tolerable native teachers, and of nearly all elementary books for the study of the native languages, then loudly and justly complained of; and to form a more permanent body, for the systematical examination of young men entering on the public service. With the exception of this last duty, the chief objects of the college, as explained in the paper suggesting its first establishment, were to print anew the few elementary books which then existed; to encourage by pecuniary rewards the composition of such others as were required; and to educate a class of natives for the situation of teacher to the junior civil servants.”

New works, illustrative of the Carnataca have been produced by one of its oldest members, Mr. M‘Kerrell, who has been followed by Mr. Reeves. Others on Teloogoo have been published, both by the present and a former college secretary, whilst two others of its students, Mr. Whish and Mr. Viveash, are engaged in similar works on the Malayalam (circa 1826) and Mahratta languages; and an extensive class of well-informed native teachers, of nearly every one of the numerous languages in use in the Peninsula, has at length been formed, aided by a subordinate class of candidates for that office.

Whish passed out with a first class in Malayalam in 1814, 5th ranked in Tamil, was highly placed in law and placed on par with another student Dent in all these subjects. In the passing out speech they are singled out “The Gentlemen whose names stand in the first Class of the third classification, namely Messrs. Viveash, Chamier, Whish, and Dent, have made a progress in the study of the two languages which entitles them in our opinion to receive the highest salary, namely 100 Pagodas pr. month and we accordingly recommend that it be granted to them. Mr. Whish and Mr. Dent, have fully qualified themselves for promotion, and should their services be required we have no doubt that they will prove highly useful in whatever department it may be pleasure of the Right Honorable the Governor in Council to employ them.”

CM. Whish's Malayalam Grammar and Dictionary was the first publication in that language with which the fort St College was associated as far back as 1815.By 1815, he is posted as the register of the Zillah of South Malabar and by 1823 to Malabar, presumably to Calicut. He rose to the position of Sub Collector and joint magistrate of Malabar in 1826 and in 1827 took the position of assistant judge and joint criminal judge of Malabar continuing on until 1830 when he was posted to Cudappah in the same post. For some reason he was not employed in 1831, was reinstated in 1832 and died prematurely in 1832, at Cudappah.

Let us now take a look at his contributions, both as a civil servant and those a result of his study of the methods of the Malabar zodiac. We saw that as a register, and later a criminal judge he was pally with both Murdoch Brown and Thomas Baber. Baber as a person who had a high regard of the native populace, was very much Whish’s sounding board on many aspects, as we will see soon. Perhaps it was his friendship with the Raja of Kadathanad, one Sankara Varma, an intelligent man and acute mathematician, as Whish himself testifies, which put him on the track to understanding the special methods used by Hindu mathematicians. Varma had by then authored the Sadratnamala, a book on Hindu astronomy ‘comprehended by two hundred and eleven verses of different measures, abounding with fluxional forms and series’. The details Whish gathered fro