Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wilson, John (1804-1875)
WILSON, JOHN (1804–1875), missionary and orientalist, born at Lauder in Berwickshire on 11 Dec. 1804, was the eldest son of Andrew Wilson, for more than forty years a councillor of the burgh of Lauder, by his wife Janet, eldest daughter of James Hunter, a farmer of Lauderdale. When about four years old he was sent to a school in Lauder taught by George Murray, and about a year later he was transferred to the parish school under Alexander Paterson. In his fourteenth year he proceeded to Edinburgh University with a view to studying for the ministry. In his vacations he was employed at first as schoolmaster at Horndean on the Tweed, and afterwards as tutor to the sons of John Cormack, minister of Stow in Midlothian. While at the university he became more and more inspired by Christian zeal, and on 22 Dec. 1825 he founded the ‘Edinburgh Association of Theological Students in aid of the Diffusion of the Gospel.’ His attention was drawn to the mission field, and in the same year he offered himself to the Scottish Missionary Society as a missionary candidate. In 1828 he published anonymously ‘The Life of John Eliot, the Apostle of the Indians’ (Edinburgh, 16mo). His attention had been directed to India while acting as tutor to Cormack's nephews, the sons of (Sir) John Rose, an Indian soldier, and by the influence of Brigadier-general Alexander Walker [q. v.], former resident at Baroda; and to prepare himself for work in that country he studied anatomy, surgery, and the practice of physic at Edinburgh in 1827–8. In 1828 he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Lauder, and on 21 June was ordained missionary. In the same year he was married, and sailed from Portsmouth in the Sesostris, East Indiaman.
On his arrival at Bombay in 1829 Wilson devoted himself to the study of Maráthí, and made such rapid progress that he was able to preach in the tongue in six months, delivering his first sermon on 1 Nov. After visiting the older stations of the Scottish Missionary Society at Harnai and Bánkot, Wilson and his wife returned to Bombay on 26 Nov. 1829. Wilson immediately commenced to labour energetically among the native population, and by 4 Feb. 1831 he had formed a native church on presbyterian principles. In 1830 he founded the ‘Oriental Christian Spectator,’ the oldest Christian periodical in India, which continued to appear for thirty years.
About 1830 an important undertaking was begun by Mrs. Wilson with her husband's advice—the establishment of schools for native girls, the first of their kind in India. The first school was opened on 27 Dec. 1829, and half a year later six others had been set on foot. These, and some elementary schools for boys established by Wilson, were supplemented on 29 March 1832 by the foundation of a more advanced college for natives of both sexes. Wilson's institution invites comparison with that founded almost contemporaneously in Calcutta by Alexander Duff [q. v.] Wilson devoted more attention to female education, and gave more prominence to the study of native languages. While Duff's instrument was the English tongue, Wilson employed the vernaculars of a varied population—Maráthí, Gujaráthí, Hindustání, Hebrew, and Portuguese; with Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit for the learned classes. Both systems, however, were equally adapted to their environment: neither could have flourished amid the surroundings of the other. Wilson's college was at first known as the ‘Ambrolie English School.’ On 1 Dec. 1835, after some differences with the Scottish Missionary Society, Wilson and his colleagues in India were transferred to the church of Scotland, and the school was denominated the Scottish Mission School. In 1838 the arrival of John Murray Mitchell, a student of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and the return of the missionary Robert Nesbit (d. 1855), rendered it possible to organise the school on a more extended basis, and it became known as the General Assembly's Institution. A new building was completed in 1843, but Wilson was immediately afterwards obliged to relinquish it on quitting the church of Scotland at the time of the disruption. He carried on his school in another building which was finished in 1855. The present ‘Wilson College’ was completed about 1887.
Wilson did not, however, confine his efforts to the native youth. He entered into public discussions with the Hindu Bráhmans, and with the Muhammadans and Parsís. His courtesy and knowledge of oriental literature made no less impression than his logic, and by familiarising the native mind with Christian modes of thought he prepared the way for further progress. In 1837, however, a dispute arose which threatened serious consequences. Some of the Parsí pupils at the institution having shown an intention of becoming Christians, one of them was carried off by his friends, while two others evaded capture by taking refuge in Wilson's house. After various violent attempts a writ of habeas corpus was taken out for one of them, and on 6 May 1839 he appeared in court and declared his intention to remain with Wilson. The consequence of these proceedings was the removal of all but fifty out of 284 pupils at the institution, and it was some years before the former numbers were regained.
In the meantime Wilson sought to spread the influence of the mission beyond Bombay by tours through various parts of the country. In 1831, with Charles Pinhorn Farrar, the father of Dean Farrar, he proceeded to Násik on the Godávari, through Poona and Ahmadnagar. In the following year he went eastward to Jálna and the caves of Ellora in Haidarábád, and in the cold season of 1833–4 he visited the south Maráthá country and the Portuguese settlement at Goa. In 1835 he journeyed through Surat, Baroda, and Káthiáwár; and between 1836 and 1842 he visited the Gairsoppa Falls and Rájputána, besides returning to Káthiáwár and Somnáth. These frequent expeditions were used by Wilson as opportunities for spreading religious teaching, while at the same time he collected oriental manuscripts, and by constant intercourse with the natives increased his stock of oriental knowledge, in which he was acquiring a European reputation. He was elected a member of the Bombay Literary Society in 1830, and became president in 1835. On 18 June 1836 he was elected a member of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was the first to partially decipher the rock inscriptions of Asoka at Girnar, which had so long remained an enigma to western savants, and on 7 March 1838 James Prinsep [q. v.] made a full acknowledgment of his services to the Royal Asiatic Society. From 1836 onward he was frequently consulted by the supreme court and by the executive government on questions of Parsí law and custom. In 1843 he published ‘The Parsí Religion unfolded, refuted, and contrasted with Christianity’ (Bombay, 8vo), a work which obtained the favourable notice of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and which on 7 Feb. 1845 procured his election as a fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1843 Wilson was compelled by ill-health to take a furlough, and visited Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, on his way to Scotland. The fruit of his observations was the ‘Lands of the Bible visited and described’ (Edinburgh, 1847, 2 vols. 8vo). He arrived in Edinburgh immediately after the disruption of the church of Scotland, and without hesitation he joined the free church. After addressing the general assembly at Glasgow in October he accompanied Robert Smith Candlish [q. v.] to England, and advocated the cause of Indian missions at Oxford and London. The establishment of the Nágpur mission under Stephen Hislop was largely the result of his insistence of the need of a mission in Central India.
Wilson returned to India in the autumn of 1847, and in 1849 he commenced a tour in Sind, in which he was joined by Alexander Duff in the following year. The conquest of Sind had just been achieved, and Wilson was the first Christian missionary to traverse the country.
From 1848 to 1862 was intellectually the most fruitful period of Wilson's career. About 1848 he was nominated president of the ‘Cave Temple Commission’ appointed by government, chiefly through his instances and those of James Fergusson (1808–1886) [q. v.], to examine and record the antiquities connected with the cave temples of India. To this commission he gave his labour gratuitously for thirteen years, receiving the hearty co-operation of the leading orientalists in India. He published in the ‘Journal of the Bombay Asiatic Society’ (vol. iii.) ‘A Memoir on the Cave Temples and Monasteries, and other Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Jaina Remains of Western India,’ which was reprinted in 1850, and circulated by government to all the district and political officers in and around the province of Bombay. With their assistance he published a second memoir in 1852, embodying the results of the commission's work on the larger caves, like Elephanta. In 1849 he declined the appointment of permanent president of the civil and military examination committee of Bombay, and in 1854 refused the post of government translator, fearing that acceptance might injure his missionary usefulness. In 1855 he published his ‘History of the Suppression of Infanticide in Western India’ (Bombay, 8vo), and in 1858 ‘India Three Thousand Years Ago’ (Bombay, 8vo), a description of the social state of the Aryans on the banks of the Indus. At the time of the Indian mutiny his knowledge of dialects was of great service to the government, for whom he deciphered the insurgents' secret despatches written to evade detection in various archaic characters and obscure local idioms. In 1857, when the university of Bombay was constituted, he was appointed dean of the faculty of arts, a member of the syndicate, and examiner in Sanskrit, Persian, Hebrew, Maráthí, Gujaráthí, and Hindustání, and he soon after was made vice-chancellor by Lord Lawrence.
In 1860 Wilson made a second tour in Rájputána, and in 1864 he was consulted by government in regard to the Abyssinian expedition. In 1870 he made a second visit to Scotland, and was chosen moderator of the general assembly. He returned to Bombay on 9 Dec. 1872, and laboured unweariedly until his death at his residence, ‘The Cliff,’ near Bombay, on 1 Dec. 1875. He was buried in the old Scottish burial-ground. His portrait, engraved by Joseph Brown, is prefixed to his ‘Life’ by Dr. George Smith, C.I.E. Wilson was twice married: first at Edinburgh, on 12 Aug. 1828, to Margaret, daughter of Kenneth Bayne, minister of Greenock. She died on 19 April 1835, leaving a son Andrew (1831–1881) [q. v.], who is separately noticed. Wilson married, secondly, in September 1846, Isabella, second daughter of James Dennistoun of Dennistoun. She died in 1867, leaving no issue.
Wilson's abilities as an orientalist were great, and would have earned him yet higher fame had he not always subordinated his studies to his mission work. It is not easy to overestimate the importance of his labours for Christianity in western India. During later life Indian officials, native potentates, and European travellers alike regarded him with esteem and affection. Lord Lawrence, the governor-general, and Lord Elphinstone, governor of Bombay, were among his personal friends. Through his educational establishments and his wide circle of acquaintances his influence radiated from Bombay over the greater part of India, and natives of Africa also came to study under his care. Besides the works already mentioned he was the author of:
- ‘An Exposure of the Hindu Religion, in Reply to Mora Bhatta Dandekara,’ Bombay, 1832, 8vo.
- ‘A Second Exposure of the Hindu Religion,’ Bombay, 1834, 8vo.
- ‘Memoirs of Mrs. Wilson,’ Edinburgh, 1838, 8vo; 5th edit. 1858.
- ‘The Evangelisation of India,’ Edinburgh, 1849, 16mo.
- ‘Indian Caste,’ edited by Peter Peterson, Bombay, 1877, 2 vols. 8vo; new edit. Edinburgh, 1878.
[Wilson's Works; Smith's Life of Wilson, 1878; Hunter's Hist. of Free Church Missions in India and Africa, 1873; Smith's Life of Alexander Duff, 1881; Marrat's Two Standard Bearers in the East, 1882.]