Truths. Prodosh Aich
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to Helmine von Chezy, Hamilton would have been married for thirteen years before he left India. Assuming that he could not have come to India before the end of 1783 (Why 1783? What should he have done in Kolkata without resources before he became ensign at the beginning of 1785? She does not put these or similar questions.), and allowing some time before he decided to marry an Indian woman, one may conclude that he cannot have left India before the year 1797. It is the more interesting to arrive at the year 1797 as the terminus post quem for his departure from India, because the year 1797 at the same time is the terminus post quem given by another source for his arrival in Edinburgh. Indeed, according to a statement of Lord Cockburn: ‘In particular, between 1797 and 1800, some conspicuous young men had come to Edinburgh, to whom, being strangers, the merits of Jeffrey were more apparent than they hitherto had been to many of those among whom he dwelt. Some of these have been already named in mentioning the Speculative Society ... In addition to these were Lord Webb Seymour, Mr. Sydney Smith and Mr. Hamilton, also strangers.’”
We don’t feel an urge to raise here our standard question whether Rosane Rocher cared to check how Lord Cockburn arrived at this conclusion in 1852. However, we must confess that we are dumbfounded by these acrobatics. We read the quotations of Helmine de Chézy again and again to find the alleged statement that Alexander Hamilton had lived together with his Indian wife for thirteen years and had left behind a grown up son. It may be, we don’t possess enough fantasy not to read again and again the simple statement: Alexander Hamilton missed his native wife and his son also after 13 years and he kept them in memory. Accordingly, he, most probably, had to leave behind his “wife” and son in 1791 or 1792 in India. This wouldn’t be a singular case. It was a question of material survival. The left–behinds did get a name too, the “Anglo-Indians”. Rosane Rocher could also have wondered as we do, why Alexander Hamilton didn’t call his family to Great Britain after he became a “great and famous scholar”.
We are also astonished to note how insolently “history” is being forged. Rosane Rocher completed this “reconstruction” in the first ten pages of her book of 128 pages. Then on pages 11–33 under the subtitle: “Great Britain: The first publications” she ascribed to Alexander Hamilton as many anonymous articles published in the Edinburgh Review and in Asiatic Annual Register as she needed to make in a learned way a great and famous scholar out of him. In the following pages wondrous metamorphoses occur. All shaky speculations and forgeries connected with his biography become hard facts. Not only for Rosane Rocher who dealt in the pages 11 ff. with “facts” only.
That was just what other “historiographers” were waiting for. A classic example of how (hi)stories are “made” in the “wonder that is” modern scientific culture. We mean example and not a singular case of making “scholar extraordinary”.
Hard to believe, but unfortunately true. We read on page 33 of that well-known book that appeared in 1997 in the University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London. Title: Aryans and British India. Author: Thomas R. Trautmann, a professor at the University of Michigan, a favourite pupil of the renowned “historian” Arthur Llewellyn Basham (highlighted by us):
“...the Orientalist Alexander Hamilton reviews A journey from Madras, through the countries Mysore, Canara and Malabar, whose author, Francis Buchanan, ‘possessed no means of communication with the natives but through an interpreter’ ...”
On page 110: “Several of the new Orientalists, such as Alexander Hamilton and Sir John Shore, had Indian wives, and it cannot but have helped them to develop a fluency, if not in Sanskrit or Persian, at least in Hindustani and other modern languages.”
Sir John Shore hasn’t mentioned Alexander Hamilton at all in his 13 volumes on Sir William Jones published in 1804. We continue reading Thomas R. Trautmann, a favourite pupil of the renowned “historian” Arthur Llewellyn Basham. Page 115:
“Alexander Hamilton, member of the, Asiatic Society and retired officer of the East India Company’s army, became, by virtue of his appointment to the East India College, the first Sanskritist to hold a professorship in an institution of higher learning in Europe.”
On page 138–139: “Alexander Hamilton, the first Sanskrit professor in Britain (at the East India College), became the conduit by which knowledge of Sanskrit passed from Calcutta to Paris and thence to Germany. Hamilton, who had served as an officer in the army of the East India Company, learned Sanskrit in Calcutta and became a member of the Asiatic Society (did he learn Sanskrit before he became a member?); in 1790 he had petitioned the government for facilities to study Sanskrit. He resigned his commission and returned to Britain in 1796, where he lived off the proceeds of journalism, writing for the Monthly Review for a time, and then for the Edinburgh Review, of which he was one of the founders (Thomas R. Trautmann is capable of wondrous fantasies, isn’t he?). By the peace of Amiens (25. March 1802) hostilities between Britain and Napoleonic France were suspended, and Hamilton like many other Britons, took the opportunity to travel to France, only to become a prisoner of war by the decree of 23 May 1803, when war resumed. Hamilton was however treated most liberally by the French authorities, being allowed to live wherever he liked in Paris and to move about freely. He spent the time in the company of Orientalists, especially Louis Mathieu Langlès, with whom he collaborated in cataloguing the Indian manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which service was probably the reason of his liberty. He also taught Sanskrit to a few students, of whom the most notable was Friedrich Schlegel, whose Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier” (On the language and wisdom of the Indians, 1808) had a vast effect in fomenting German Indomania and Sanskrit study. Schlegel’s brother August Wilhelm Schlegel later repaired to Paris to study Sanskrit, going on to become the first professor of Sanskrit in Germany (1818), and his student (Thomas R. Trautmann’s wonder-some discovery!) Franz Bopp also went to Paris for Sanskrit study, as did Friedrich Max Mueller somewhat later.”
Why do we meet swindlers only? A forgery of history par excellence. We are not dealing with singular cases. In this area, we are yet to find a singular case of academic correctness and honesty. We assume that our findings are only a peak of the general dirty morass.
We are still dealing with the same Alexander Hamilton who wrote that application. Thomas R. Trautmann doesn’t run any risk spreading eloquently false (hi)stories. After all, he is a “renowned historian” with “profound knowledge” in anthropology too. Anthropology is that branch of “science” which followed the “philology” to which we owe “racism”.
And if the false presentations get exposed, nothing will happen to Thomas R. Trautmann. Because here he makes a footnote to shun off his responsibility. Though, this is his first remark relating to Alexander Hamilton: “For the information in this paragraph I rely on Rosane Rocher’s biography (1968) and article (1970) on Hamilton, and on Jane Rendall’s work on the Scottish Enlightenment.” A fine state of affairs, isn’t it?
Later on page 148–149 he quotes Alexander Hamilton more than once. These are quotes from Edinburgh Review, from articles ascribed to him by Rosane Rocher. Here are a few samples of how nicely they are presented:
“Hamilton embraced Colebrooke’s (We shall deal with Colebrooke also, but in due course in a later chapter.) unity of origin theory and deployed it in his Edinburgh Review piece...
He believed it not improbable that the Brahmins entered India as conquerors...
He thought however that the Paiśāci or demons’ language spoken of by the ancient Indian grammarians was totally distinct from the Sanskrit in its origin...that one great nation formerly peopled Hindustan, and were driven, by invaders, to those hilly countries which they still occupy. (Hamilton 1808:93).”
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