HALHED MANUFACTURES MANUSMRITI

He Translated it From Persian!

Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751 – 1830) was the person, who at the suggestion of Warren Hastings, manufactured an English version of Manusmriti. This translation from Persian was published in 1776 as A Code of Gentoo Laws. In 1778 he published A Grammar of the Bengal Language, and to print it, he set up the first Bengali press in India. (1)

Halhed was born in Westminster, in a merchant family to banker William Halhed, and was educated at Harrow School, where he began a close friendship with R B Sheridan, the Irish playwright who wrote The Rivals and School for Scandal. While at Oxford he undertook oriental studies under the influence of later Indologist William Jones. Jones had preceded him from Harrow to Oxford and they shared an intellectual relationship. Accepting a writership in the service of the East India Company, he reached India and became a crony of the Governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings. Hastings had been the first Governor General from 1772–1785.

Halhed's mother Frances was the daughter of John Caswall, a Member of Parliament. Halhed entered Christ Church, Oxford at the age of 17. He learnt some Persian. He remained there for three years but did not take a degree. Halhed's father was disappointed and decided to send him to India to work for the East India Company. His application for a writership was granted by Harry Verelst, who had been Governor of Bengal during 1767-1769.

Halhed

Halhed began work in the accountant general's office and was next used as a Persian translator. He was sent to Kasimbazar by William Aldersey, Governor, for practical experience, and also to learn the silk trade. It was in Kasimbazar that Halhed acquired his wife and Bengali, for dealing with the aurungs (weaving districts). (2) In Bengal, he had several romantic interests: Elizabeth Pleydell, a certain Nancy, Diana Rochfort, and Henrietta Yorke. (3) Elizabeth was the daughter of John Zephaniah Surgeon and temporary governor of Bengal (1760), and the wife of Charles Stafford Pleydell. Upon arriving in Calcutta, Halhed had stayed in the home of Pleydell. Diana was the wife of Sir John D' Oyly, who was Sheriff of Calcutta in 1779. In the same year, D'Oyly married Diana Rochfort, widow of William Cotes and was appointed Resident for Murshidabad.

After wooing several accomplished women, Halhed married (Helena) Louisa Ribaut, stepdaughter of Johannes Matthias Ross, the head of the Dutch factory at Kasimbazar.  

Halhed soon became one of Hastings's favourites. On 5 July 1774, the Governor asked for an assistant for Persian documents, in addition to the munshis, and Halhed was appointed. But when Hastings nominated him as Commissary General in October 1776, there was serious resistance, and Halhed found his position untenable. (4)

Just before Halhed was appointed as a writer, the East India Company's court of directors notified the President and council at Fort William College of their decision to take over the local administration of civil justice: the implementation was left with the newly appointed Governor, Warren Hastings. Hastings assumed the governorship in April 1772 and by August submitted what was to become the Judicial Plan. It provided among other things that "all suits regarding the inheritance, marriage, caste and other religious usages, or institutions, the laws of the Koran with respect to Mohametans and those of the Shaster with respect to Gentoos shall be invariably adhered to." No British personnel could read Sanskrit, however. (5) Gentoo was the term used before coining the word Hindu, either derived from the Portuguese Gentio meaning gentile heathen or native where the Portuguese used it to differentiate between the native Indians from Muslim Moors.

Hastings and his infamous Bengal Squad came forward with a proposal of setting up the Company's firm administration in India. The Bengal squad consisted of Halhed, David Anderson, Major William Sands, Colonel Sweeney Toone, Dr Clement Francis, Captain Jonathan Scott, John Shore, Lieutenant Colonel William Popham, and Sir John D Oyly, They were active members of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and later became MPs.

The colonizers were desperate to get access to the inner domain, the spiritual fulcrum of India because they knew the less strenuous way to force the rule on the outer society was to make sure that the other isn't even aware of being ruled. The inner domain consists of the language and its compositions, the societal compositions of men and women. As Bernard Cohn pointed out in his Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: In British India, Hastings knew the importance of knowing the knowledge.

Thus, the Hastings squad decided to govern the natives with their own personal laws, that could be derived from native compositions. To rule the Gentoos, a committee of 11 Brahmin pandits was formed, who were given the task of compiling the Hindu personal law. The pandits began to assimilate a text from multiple sources which they named Vivadarnavasetu (A Bridge on the Sea of Litigations). As mentioned in Theodor Aufrecht’s Catalogus Catalogorum, an alphabetical register of Sanskrit works and authors, it is a digest compiled by the order of Hastings, by Bāṇeśvara and others. Since Halhed was not proficient in Sanskrit and knew little Persian, the Sanskrit text prepared by the pandits was translated into Persian by Zaid ud -Din Ali Rasai. Then Halhed translated it from Persian to English, working with Hastings.

The completed translation was available on 27 March 1775,  which Halhed named, A Code of Gentoo Laws or Ordinations of Pandits. This is the first translation of Manusmriti into English, and this is the background of the reincarnation of Manusmriti in India. The East India Company had it printed in London in 1776. This was an internal edition, distributed by the East India Company. A pirate edition was printed by Donaldson the following year, followed by a second edition in 1781; translations in French and German appeared by 1778, using the Company's Translation Fund.

The book begins with a letter from Hastings to the Company directors: " I have now the satisfaction of to transmit to you a complete and corrected copy of a translation of the Gentoo Code, executed with great ability diligence and fidelity by Mr Halhed, from a Persian version of the original Shanscrit which was undertaken under the immediate inspection of the pundits or compilers of this work...the pundits when desired to revise them, could not be prevailed upon to make any alterations, as they declared, they had the sanction of their Shaster, and were therefore incapable of amendment."

It contains a letter of thanks from Halhed to Hastings which speaks of a plan: "Indeed, if all the lights, which at different periods have been thrown upon this subject, by your happy suggestions, had been withheld, there would have remained for my share of the performance nothing but a mass of obscurity and confusion; for that in your own right, the whole result of the execution is yours, as well as the entire merit of the original plan".

In the preface to the book, Halhed says that for the commerce of India and the territorial establishment in Bengal, "a well-timed" toleration in matters of religion is necessary and to achieve it, the adoption of original Institutes of the country, which do not clash with the interests of the conquerors is essential. "To a steady pursuance of this maxim", he continues, "much of the success of the Romans may be attributed, who not only allowed to their foreign subjects the free exercise of their own religion, and the administration of their own jurisdiction, but sometimes by a policy still more flattering, even naturalized such parts of the mythology of the conquered, as were in any respect compatible with their own system."

The plan of the conquerors is clear: invent a personal law which has its roots in religion. 

Further, Halhed says: "With a view to the same political advantages, and in observance of so striking an example, the compilation was set on foot; which must be considered as the only work of the kin, wherein the genuine principles of the Gentoo Jurisprudence are made public, with the sanction of their most respectable pundits (or lawyers) and which offers a complete confutation of a belief too common in Europe, that the Hindoos have no written laws whatever, but such as relate to the ceremonious peculiarities of their superstition."

Since there was no written personal law for Hindus like the Sharia of Muslims, Halhed invented one. 

How was it compiled? Halhed describes the process: "The professors of the ordinances here collected still speak the original language in which they were composed, and which is entirely unknown to the bulk of the people, who have settled upon those professors several great endowments and benefactions in all parts of Hindostan, and pay them besides a degree of personal respect little short of idolatry, in return for the advantages, supposed to be derived from their studies. A set of the most experienced of these lawyers was selected from every part of Bengal for the purpose of compiling the present work, which they picked out sentence by sentence from various originals in the Shanscrit language, neither adding to nor diminishing any part of the ancient text. The articles thus collected were next translated literally into Persian, under the inspection of one of their own body; and from that translation were rendered into English with equal attention to the closeness and fidelity of the version."

So, a single text of the Hindu personal law was not available; a new text was compiled from various originals!

The book made Halhed's reputation, but was controversial, given that the English translation was remote from its original. It failed to become the authoritative text of the Anglo-Indian judicial system. Its impact had more to do with Halhed's preface and the introduction to Sanskrit than the laws themselves. The Critical Review of London recorded in September 1777: (6)

"This is a most sublime performance ... we are persuaded that even this enlightened quarter of the globe cannot boast anything which soars so completely above the narrow, vulgar sphere of prejudice and priestcraft. The most amiable part of modern philosophy is hardly upon a level with the extensive charity, the comprehensive benevolence, of a few rude untutored Hindoo Bramins ... Mr Halhed has rendered more real service to this country, to the world in general, by this performance, than ever flowed from all the wealth of all the nabobs by whom the country of these poor people has been plundered ... Wealth is not the only, nor the most valuable commodity, which Britain might import from India."

But the output completely violated the spirit of actual practice. The result was a magnification of the problem of caste hierarchy in India, which helped the British to divide and rule.

Halhed stated in the preface that he had been "astonished to find the similitude of Shanscrit words with those of Persian and Arabic, and even of Latin and Greek: and these not in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutation of refined arts and improved manner might have occasionally introduced; but in the main ground-work of language, in monosyllables, in the names of numbers, and the appellations of such things as would be first discriminated as the immediate dawn of civilisation." This observation was heralded as a major step towards the "discovery" of the Indo-European language family.

Hastings

In 1785 Halhed returned to England, and from 1790–1795 was Member of Parliament for Lymington, Hants. For some time he was a disciple of Richard Brothers, a teacher of British Israelism, and a speech in parliament in defence of Brothers made it impossible for Halhed to remain in the House of Commons, from which he resigned in 1795. He subsequently obtained a home appointment under the East India Company.

Leaving Bengal, Halhed went to Holland, and on to London. The financial crunch forced him to consider a return to India, but he tried to do so without overt support from Hastings. On 18 November 1783, he asked the Company's directors to appoint him to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta. He was successful, but when he reached Calcutta, Hastings was in Lucknow. (7)

Halhed presented his credentials to Edward Wheler, the acting governor-general, but there was no vacancy in the committee and no other appointments could be made without Hastings. Summoned by Hastings to Lucknow, Halhed made a futile journey, since Hastings had by then decided to leave for England and was bound for Calcutta. (8) Hastings was planning to bring supporters to England and wanted to have Halhed there as an agent of the Nawab Wazir of Oudh. At this point, Halhed threw in his lot with Hastings. (9)

The East India Company lacked employees with good Bengali. Halhed proposed a Bengali translatorship to the Board of Trade and set out a grammar of Bengali, the salaries of the pandits and the scribe who assisted him being paid by Hastings. The difficulty arose with a Bengali font. Charles Wilkins undertook it, the first Bengali press was set up at Hugli, and the work of creating the typeface was done by Panchanan Karmakar, under the supervision of Wilkins. (10)

Wilkins informed the Council on 13 November 1778 that the printing of Halhed's Bengali Grammar has been completed, by which time Halhed had left Bengal. Halhed's Grammar was widely believed at the time to be the first grammar of Bengali, because the Portuguese work of Manuel da Assumpção, published in Lisbon in 1743, was largely forgotten.

In creative writing, Halhed's early collaboration with leading playwright Sheridan was not a success, though they laboured on works including Crazy Tales and the farce Ixiom, later referred to as Jupiter, which was not performed. One work, The Love Epistles of Aristaenetus, translated from Greek into English metre, written by Halhed, revised by Sheridan and published anonymously, did make a brief stir. The friendship with Sheridan came to an end, Elizabeth Linley chose Sheridan over Halhed, and later they were political enemies. 

Elizabeth (1754-1792) English singer who was known to have possessed great beauty. She was the subject of several paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, who was a family friend, Joshua Reynolds and Richard Samuel. An adept poet and writer, she became involved in Whig politics. The second of twelve children and the first daughter of the composer Thomas Linley and his wife Mary Johnson, Elizabeth became the wife of Sheridan. She was one of the most noted soprano singers of her day, though Sheridan discouraged her from performing in public after their marriage. The Sheridans' relationship was stormy, and both parties had affairs; Elizabeth also had several miscarriages and a stillborn baby before producing a son, Thomas, born in 1775. One of Elizabeth's lovers was Lord Edward FitzGerald, who was the father of her daughter born in 1792. Elizabeth had suffered ill health for some time, which the traumatic labour exacerbated. She died of tuberculosis in 1792.

The opening of the Calcutta Theatre in November 1773 gave Halhed the occasion to write prologues. A production of King Lear also spurred him to write more pieces. He produced a humorous verse: A Lady's Farewell to Calcutta was a lament for those who regretted staying in the mofussil.

Halhed returned to England, on 18 June 1785, identified as a close supporter of Hastings, and as a member of the Bengal Squad of 1780–1784, in Britain that supported Hastings. (11) There the "Bengal Squad" was a group of Members of Parliament, who looked after the interests of East India Company officials who had returned to Great Britain, from India. From that position, they became defenders of the Company. (12)

Halhed wrote an anonymous tract in 1779 in defence of Hastings's policies with respect to the Maratha War. He began to write poetry, also, expressing his admiration for the governor, such as a Horatian Ode of 1782. Under the pseudonym of "Detector," he wrote a series of open letters that appeared in newspapers, as separate pamphlets and in collections. These letters span over a year, from October 1782 to November 1783.

When Edmund Burke, philosopher and MP, brought 22 charges against Hastings in April 1786, Halhed was in the middle of the defence. For the Benares charge, Halhed drafted a reply for Scott, not in accord with Hastings's chosen line. He also cast doubt on some of Hastings's accounts when he was called on to testify. As a result, Halhed became unpopular with the defence team. (13)

The impeachment of Hastings was attempted between 1787 and 1795 in Parliament. Hastings was accused of misconduct during his time in Calcutta, particularly relating to mismanagement and personal corruption. The impeachment prosecution was led by Edmund Burke and became a wider debate about the role of the East India Company and the expanding empire in India. The impeachment trial became the site of a debate between two radically opposed visions of empire—one represented by Hastings, based on ideas of absolute power and conquest in pursuit of the exclusive national interests of the colonizer, versus one represented by Burke, of sovereignty, based on a recognition of the rights of the colonized.

Halhed's book

The trial did not sit continuously and the case dragged on for seven years. When the eventual verdict was given Hastings was acquitted. It has been described as "probably the British Isles' most famous, certainly the longest, political trial."

Halhed failed as a Tory candidate for Parliament, at Leicester in 1790, and it cost him a great deal. He succeeded in acquiring a seat in May 1791 at the borough of Lymington, in Hampshire. (14) His life was changed in 1795 by Richard Brothers and his prophecies. A revealed knowledge of the Prophecies and Times appealed to Halhed and resonated with the style of antique Hindu texts. (15) He argued for Brothers in parliament, but he was arrested for criminal lunacy, severely damaging his reputation. (16)

Thereafter, Halhed became a recluse for 12 years. He wrote on orientalist topics but published nothing. From 1804 he was a follower of Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), a self-described religious prophetess from Devon, England. In poverty, he applied for one of the newly opened civil secretary posts at the East India Company and was appointed in 1809. (17) With access to the Company library, Halhed spent time in 1810 translating a collection of Tipu Sultan's dreams written in the prince's own hand. He also made translations of the Mahabharata as a personal study, to "understand the grand scheme of the universe". (18)

Hastings died in 1818. In the spring of 1819, Halhed resigned from the Company, and he was allowed a £500 pension and recovered some of his early investments. [22] Halhed lived on for another decade, without publishing anything further, and quietly died in 1830. At his death, his assets were estimated to be around £18,000. Louisa Halhed lived for a year longer. (19)

Halhed's major works are those he produced in Bengal, in the period 1772 to 1778.  British Museum bought Halhed's collection of Oriental manuscripts, and his unfinished translation of the Mahabharata went to the library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. (20)

Among his works, The Upanisad (1787) was based on Dara Shikoh's Persian translation. He wrote and distributed a Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of the Richard Brothers, and of his Mission to recall the Jews. Scandalously, he identified London with Babylon and Sodom and was judged eccentric or mad. He was also mad when he manufactured the Hindu personal law.

____________________

1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press

2. Rosane Rocher (1983). Orientalism, Poetry, and the Millennium: The Checkered Life of Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, 1751–1830. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 38.

3. ibid, pp. 40–1

4. ibid, pp. 92–6

5. ibid,. pp. 48 and 51

6. Dalrymple, William (2004). White Mughals: love and betrayal in eighteenth-century India. Penguin, p 40 

7.  Rocher, pp. 119–121

8. ibid, pp. 121–2

9. ibid

10. Dalrymple, p 40

11. C. H. Philips, The East India Company "Interest" and the English Government, 1783–4: (The Alexander Prize Essay), Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Vol. 20 (1937), pp. 83–101, at p. 90; Cambridge University Press 

12. Rocher,  p. 131

13. ibid, pp. 132–4.

14. ibid,  pp.141–2

15. ibid,  p. 157

16. ibid,  pp. 168–9

17. Rocher, Rosane. "Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.

18. Rocher, p. 214

19. ibid, p. 228

20. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.)

Cambridge University Press.

© Ramachandran 

BUHLER DROWNS HIMSELF AFTER FAKE DISCOVERIES

Alois Anton Furer's Fake Buddha Discoveries

Georg Buhler (1837-1898), the German scholar who translated Manusmriti, drowned in Lake Constance, on 8 April 1898, under mysterious circumstances. He supposedly committed suicide after his pupil Alois Anton Führer's fake archaeological discoveries in India. Buhler had generously endorsed Führer's fake "discoveries", and Fuhrer had plagiarised Buhler's documents.

Lake Constance, where Buhler committed suicide, refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance, Lower Lake Constance, and a connecting stretch of the Rhine called the Lake Rhine. These water bodies lie within the Lake Constance Basin in the Alpine Foreland through which the Rhine flows. The lake is situated where Germany, Switzerland, and Austria meet. Its shorelines lie in the German states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, the Swiss cantons of St. Gallen, Thurgau, and Schaffhausen, and the Austrian state of Vorarlberg.

Contemporary accounts mostly attributed Buhler's drowning to an accident. An obituary of him by Austrian Indologist Moritz Winternitz, "Georg Buhler in Memoriam" states that "while enjoying alone in a small boat a beautiful evening on the Lake of Constance, he seems to have lost an oar, and in trying to recover it, to have overbalanced himself". But it has been speculated that it was a suicide motivated by Bühler's connections to a scandal involving his former student Alois Anton Führer. (1) Führer (1853 – 1930) was a German Indologist who worked for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). (2) He is known for his archaeological excavations, which he believed proved that Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal. (3) Führer's archaeological career ended in disgrace as "a forger and dealer in fake antiquities", and he had to resign from his position in 1898. (4)

Buhler

On that fateful day, Buhler was travelling from Vienna to Zurich, to spend the Easter vacation with his wife and son, who were staying there with relatives. He left Vienna on 5 April and broke his journey at Lindau in Lake Constance. According to Winternitz, he was probably tempted by the fine weather and wanted to enjoy roaring before proceeding to Zurich. (5) On the 7th, after rowing with a small hired boat, he returned to the hotel. On the next day, he hired the same boat to take another trip. He was last seen at about 7 pm. The next day the boat was found floating bottom upwards on the lake. Buhler had not informed his wife about the travel, which is suspicious.

T A Phleps, who wrote, Lumbini on Trial: The Untold Story, raised the question of whether it was an accident. (6) British Writer Charles Allen opined that Buhler must have committed suicide considering possible defamation for upholding and publishing forged material, particularly related to the "discovery" of Buddha's birthplace. During the last years of his life, Buhler was connected to Alois Anton Führer, an archaeologist in the Archaeological Survey of India. Führer, who joined the ASI in 1885, "was engaged in plagiarism since 1882, the nature of which not only escaped the notice of many scholars but on the contrary, they considered it as a work of serious scholarship."(7)

Führer was born in Limburg an der Lahn, Germany, into a Catholic family. He studied Roman Catholic theology and Oriental studies at the University of Würzburg, was ordained in 1878 and received his PhD in 1879. His Sanskrit lecturer, Julius Jolly, was associated with the Bombay School of Indology. Probably due to him, he was appointed as a teacher of Sanskrit at St Xavier's Institute in Bombay. (8)

Julius Jolly (1849 – 1932) was a German scholar and translator of Indian law and medicine. Born in Heidelberg, the son of physicist Philipp Johann Gustav von Jolly (1809–1884), Jolly studied comparative linguistics, Sanskrit, and Iranian languages in Berlin and Leipzig.  Jolly became a Professor at the University of Würzburg in 1877, in the fields of comparative linguistics and Sanskrit. In 1882–1883 he visited India as Tagore professor of law, Calcutta, where he gave twelve lectures later published as Outlines of a History of the Hindu Law of Partition, Inheritance and Adoption (1885).

In 1896, Jolly contributed to Grundriss der Indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde (Encyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research), later revised by Jolly and in 1928 translated by Balakrishna Ghosh, under the title Hindu Law and Custom. In this volume, Jolly discussed family law and heirship, the law of things and obligations, offences and penalties, court procedures, customs and traditions. In 1901 he also contributed a study of Indian medicine, still considered one of the most complete studies of the history of Indian medical literature.

Jolly edited the law books of Vishnu, Narada, and Manu, and translated the first two for the Sacred Books of the East (Vol. 7, The Institutes of Visnu, 1880; and Vol. 33, The Minor Law-Books: Brihaspati, 1889). He retired in 1922, when he became co-editor of the Journal of Indian History, but continued to give lectures in Würzburg till 1928. He published a new critical edition of Kautilya's Arthashastra in collaboration with R. Schmidt in the Panjab Sanskrit Series, 1923–1924.

Following Jolly's footprints, in 1882, Führer was able to publish two lectures about Hindu Law in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. (9) The lectures were entirely plagiarized from earlier works: only about one-tenth of the content is his own. (10) Führer left the Catholic Church around 1884 and converted to Anglicanism which cost him his job; he returned to Germany, from where he applied for a new job in the museum in Lucknow in India. (11)

Führer came back to India in 1885 and on his arrival, Alfred Comyn Lyall appointed him Curator of the Lucknow Provincial Museum. Führer immediately set about improving the museum. Impressed by the changes, Lyall, the Chair of the Museum's Management Committee, wrote to Calcutta asking whether a part-time job for Führer could be found with the Archaeological Survey of India. (12) He thus came to hold a double appointment, one as Curator at the museum and the other as Archaeological Surveyor to the North-Western Provinces. He was part of the N-W.P. and Oudh Circle of the Archaeological Survey. (13)

In 1886, the turning point came: Führer was instructed by the government of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh and the Government of India to carry out an expedition to Nepal. (14)

But, from 1888, there was severe lobbying aimed at reducing Government expenses and curtailing the budget of the Archaeological Survey of India, a period of about ten years known as the "Buck crisis", after the Liberal Edward Buck. (15) In effect, this severely threatened the employment of the employees of the ASI, including Führer, who had just started a family and become a father. (16) These existential threats to his livelihood may have become "a motive for misbehaviour" on the part of Führer. Buck announced in 1892 that the Archaeological Survey of India would be shut down and all ASI staff would be dismissed by 1895, to generate savings for the Government's budget. (17) The prospect of being fired may have prompted Führer to act recklessly with his discoveries in a desperate attempt to avoid that fate. He may have thought a great discovery within the next three years might be able to turn public opinion and save the funding of the ASI. (18)

So, in 1891, Führer started excavations at the Ramnagar site of Ahichchhatra. (19) The excavations were quite disappointing. (20) Pressured by the need to get results, Führer started to report invented discoveries, such as ancient dated inscriptions that never existed, and non-existent Jain inscriptions. (21) German Indologist Heinrich Lüders would later be able to show that the supposed Jain inscriptions were fakes compiled from earlier real inscriptions found in Mathura. (22) In 1912 Lüders summarized "As all statements about epigraphical finds that admit of verification have proved to be false, it is very likely that no inscriptions at all have turned up". (23)

Führer also went to Sanchi during the 1891–1892 season and recovered tens of unpublished donative inscriptions, but these could not have the impact he hoped for. (24) Only a new inscription by King Ashoka achieved sufficient impact on public opinion. (25)

Führer carried out very successful excavations at the Kankali Tila site of Mathura between 1889 and 1891 which improved his understanding of the history of Jainism and gained him a reputation "as the most successful of the professional excavators".(26) Still, Führer's reports continued to be the result of extensive plagiarization, taking especially from the work of his superior Georg Bühler at that time, although this is not clear-cut and may only be the result of intensive cooperation between the two. (27) Führer's reports are also noted for being particularly vague and lacking details. (28)

Fuhrer

In 1912, Lüders identified in the Lucknow Provincial Museum forged inscriptions in Brahmi on artefacts belonging to Führer's excavations at Mathura and Ramnagar, forgeries which he attributed to Führer himself. (29) Some of the forged inscriptions were direct copies of inscriptions on other objects, previously published in Epigraphia Indica. (30)

Führer was on a survey tour to Burma, in 1893–1894. In 1894, he declared a "'path-breaking discovery" of three ancient Gupta inscriptions he said he found at Pagan and Tagaung in Burma. The "discovery" pushed back the epigraphical knowledge of interactions with India by close to six centuries, generating huge acclaim. (31) He published the "discovery" in his Progress Reports of the Epigraphical Section in the Working Season of 1893–94. He elaborated a description of the inscriptions he had supposedly found, without ever producing a drawing or a photographic proof, although he had a draftsman and a photographer with him on the expedition. (32) Large extracts of his report were reproduced in The Indian Antiquary Vol-xxiv (1895). (33) His "discovery" was taken at face value, and its conclusions were repeated by many scholarly works such as the Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States in 1900, before being adopted by popular works as well: "By the early 1900s, anyone with an interest in the archaeology of Burma had ample opportunity to read about the Gupta inscriptions in Fuhrer's own words". (34)

It was only uncovered many years later that the inscriptions were actually inexistent, a fact revealed openly by Charles Duroiselle in 1921: "This Sanskrit inscription never existed, but was invented in toto by Dr Fuhrer while on a tour in Burma". (35) Source analysis shows that he imagined the content of these inscriptions by basing himself on older publications and a list of kings from the Indian Hatthipala Jataka. (36) These events marked "a scandalous career of forgery which would some years later, come to an end in Kapilavastu". (37)

The Nigali Sagar pillar (also called the "Nigliva" pillar) of Ashoka, initially discovered by a Nepalese officer on a hunting expedition in 1893, (38) was inspected by Furer in March 1895, and he also "identified" a Brahmi inscription said to be from the time of Ashoka. (39)Besides, Führer made a detailed description of the remains of a monumental "Konagamana stupa" near the Nigali Sagar pillar, (40) which was later discovered to be an imaginative construct. (41) Fuhrer wrote that "On all sides around this interesting monument are ruined monasteries, fallen columns, and broken sculptures" when actually nothing can be found around the pillar. (42) In the following years, inspections of the site showed that there were no such archaeological remains. Every word of Führer's description was false. (43) It was finally understood in 1901 that Führer had copied almost word-for-word this description from a report by Alexander Cunningham about the stupas in Sanchi. (44)

The announcement of these great "discoveries" succeeded in bringing the "Buck Crisis" to an end, and the ASI was finally allowed in June 1895 to continue operations, subject to yearly approval based on successful digs every year. (45) Georg Bühler, writing in July 1895 in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, continued to advocate for the preservation of the ASI, and expressed that what was needed were "new authentic documents" from the pre-Ashokan period, and they would "only be found underground". (46)

In 1896, accompanied by the regional Nepalese governor, former Commander-In-Chief of the Nepalese Army General Khadga Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana, Führer "discovered" a major inscription on a pillar of Ashoka, an inscription which, together with other evidence, confirmed Lumbini as the birthplace of the Buddha. (47)The pillar itself had been known for some time already, reported by Khadga Shamsher to Vincent Arthur Smith a few years earlier. (48) Führer made his "great discovery" when he dug the earth around the pillar and reported the discovery of the inscription in a pristine state about one metre under the surface. (49) He claimed that the locals called the site "Rummindei", which he identified with the legendary "Lumbini", whereas it was found that the site was only called "Rupa-devi". (50) The authenticity of the "discovery" remained doubtful, (51) and was openly disputed in a 2008 book by British writer Charles Allen. (52)

Fuhrer's report on discoveries in Nepal

Following the "discovery" of the pillar, Führer relied on the accounts of ancient Chinese pilgrims to search for Kapilavastu, which he thought had to be in Tilaurakot. Unable to find anything, he started excavating some structures he said were stupas. In the act of faking pre-Mauryan inscriptions on bricks, he was caught by Vincent Arthur Smith. (53) The inscriptions were bluntly characterized by Smith as "impudent forgeries". (54)

Führer was again involved in a major discovery in January 1898: the reliquaries at Piprahwa. But he arrived only after the discovery was made, and did not have time to tamper with the evidence. (55)

Around the same time, Führer was selling fake relics "authentified" by a nonexistent inscription of Upagupta, the preceptor of Ashoka, to Shin U Ma, an important monk in Burma. (56) He wrote to the Burmese monk: "Perhaps you have seen from the papers that I succeeded in discovering the Lumbini grove where Lord Buddha was born", noting that "you have unpacked the sacred relics of our Blessed Lord Buddha which are undoubtedly authentic, and which will prove a blessing to those which worship them faithfully". (57) An "authentic tooth relics of the Buddha" sent by Führer in 1896 turned out to have been carved from a piece of ivory, and another sent in 1897 was that of a horse. (58) The forgery was reported in 1898 to the British North-Western Provinces Government in India by Burmologist and member of the Burma commission Bernard Houghton. An enquiry led to Führer's resignation on 16 September 1898. (59)

Führer had come under suspicion in March 1898 following the reported forgeries of the Buddha's relics. (60) A formal inquiry was launched into his activities, but officials struggled to find a "printable" reason for Führer's dismissal. (61) Führer was officially confronted by Vincent Arthur Smith, who reported the forgeries of the Buddha's relics. (62) Führer was exposed as "a forger and dealer in fake antiquities". (63) Smith also blamed Führer for administrative failures in filing his reports to the Government, and for a false report about his preparations for future publications on his archaeological research: Führer was obliged to admit "that every statement in it [the report] was absolutely false." (64) The false inscriptions supposed to authentify the Buddha relics were not mentioned in the investigations, apparently out of fear of casting doubt on the other epigraphical discoveries made by Führer. (65) The false publication of the ancient Burmese inscriptions, the object of an institutional cover-up, would not come to light before 1921, with the revelation of their inexistence made by Charles Duroiselle. (66)

Führer was relieved of his positions, his papers seized and his offices inspected by Smith on 22 September 1898. (67) Führer had written in 1897 a monograph on his discoveries in Nigali Sagar and Lumbini, Monograph on Buddha Sakyamuni's birthplace in the Nepalese tarai, (68)which was withdrawn from circulation by the Government. (69)

Führer was dismissed and returned to Europe with his family. He died on 5 November 1930 in Binningen, Switzerland.

Vincent Arthur Smith, after retirement in 1901, revealed the blunt truth about the Nepalese discoveries and published a stark analysis of Führer's activities, apparently worried that "the reserved language used in previous official documents has been sometimes misinterpreted". (70) Smith said of Führer's description of the archaeological remains at Nigali Sagar that "every word of it is false", and characterized several of Führer's epigraphic discoveries as "impudent forgeries". (71) However, Smith never challenged the authenticity of the Lumbini pillar inscription and the Nigali Sagar inscription "discovered" by Führer. (72)

Lumbini pillar inscription

These "discoveries", at the time they were made, generated fantastic praise for the work of Führer. (73) According to the New York Post (3 May 1896) the Nigliva discovery "seems to carry the origin of Buddhism much further back". (74) The Liverpool Mercury (29 December 1896) reported that the discovery that Lumbini (also called Paderia) was "the actual birthplace of the Buddha ought to bring devout joy to about 627,000,000 people". (75) The Pall Mall Gazette (18 April 1898) related that the Piprahwa discovery "contains no less a relic than the bones of the Buddha himself". (76)

Führer was replaced as Curator of the Lucknow Museum by Edmund Smith, previously the Province's Architectural Surveyor. (77) The excavations in the Nepal Terai were entrusted to Babu Purna Chandra Mukherji, who published the results of his investigations in 1903 in A Report on a Tour of Exploration of the Antiquities in the Tarai, Nepal, the Region of Kapilavastu, in which Smith included an introduction entitled "Preparatory note" which details several of the forgeries made by Führer. (78)

Führer had an unusual religious career. He served as a Catholic priest, but in 1887 converted to Anglicanism. Following his expulsion from government service in India, Führer made plans to become a Buddhist monk. Quoting the Ceylon Standard, the Journal of the Mahabodhi Society noted: "Much interest has been excited in Buddhist and other circles at the prospect of Dr Führer coming to Ceylon to join the Buddhist priesthood. The Press notices recently made regarding this gentleman have given rise to grave suspicion. We understand that Dr Führer will have an opportunity given him of refuting the charges made against him before he is accepted by the leading Buddhists here as an exponent of the religion of Buddha."(79) These plans seem to have come to nothing because in 1901 Führer re-converted to the Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland and worked as a priest from 1906 to 1930. (80) 

The connection that Führer had with Buhler was extraordinary-While working with the ASI, he sent impressions of many inscriptions, supposedly found during the excavation, to Buhler in Vienna, who deciphered and validated them. Huxley sees this as a joint venture of Führer and Buhler. (81) Buhler had no chance to see the originals of any of the inscriptions excavated by Führer. Führer wrote false reports, drawing from Buhler's work of Sanchi and Mathura and inserted it in his Ramanagar account. "This wholesale deception appears to have passed completely unnoticed during this period," Phelps writes, "including apparently by Buhler himself." (82)

Further, Phelps remarks: "Immediately following Führer's exposure in 1898, Buhler drowned in Lake Constance in mysterious circumstances, and since he had enthusiastically endorsed all of Führer's supposed discoveries, one cannot help but wonder whether this tragedy was accidental."

Charles Allen suggests that Führer must have sent from Lucknow copies of his "preliminary brief report on the results of the Nepalese excavations...1897-198" and proof copies of Antiquities of Buddha Sakyamuni's Birthplace in the Nepalese Tarai to Buhler in Vienna. If Buhler had compared the two documents, he would have realised that Führer's "discoveries," which were fully endorsed and lauded in print by Buhler were bogus. (83) Allen ascertains that Buhler had indeed taken his own life after he was led to believe that the Priprahwa inscription was another fraud by Führer. (84)

The re-conversion of Führer proved the design of the missionaries about India. Georg Buhler, who had acknowledged Fuhrer's "discoveries", had also a missionary background- he was the son of a priest, Rev. Johann G. Bühler in Borstel, Hanover. Führer had studied Roman Catholic theology. After re-conversion, he is said to have been the Professor of Indian languages at Basel University, but it seems that he only applied for this post and was rejected. Instead, he worked from 1906 as a pastor in Binningen near Basel.

If the fraud was a joint venture, as Huxley suspected, it would have been a missionary design, to appropriate Buddha.

______________________

1. Charles Allen (2010), The Buddha and Dr Führer: An Archaeological Scandal, Penguin Books India, pp. 173–176

2. "Fuehrer, Alois Anton (1853-1930)". Indologica - Digitalisate (in German). 21 September 2010

3. Führer, AA (1897). Monograph on Buddha Sakyamuni's Birth-Place in the Nepalese Tarai. Allahabad: Government Press, North-Western Provinces and Oudh. pp. 1–48.

4. Beckwith, Christopher I. (2015). Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. Princeton University Press. pp. 235–236.

5. Winternitz,  Moritz, Georg Buhler in Memoriam, Indian Antiquary 1898, 27:337-349, quoted in Amruta Chintaman Natu, Georg Buhler's Death: Perception and Possibility, 2019, Centre of Jaina Studies, News Letter, SOAS, University of London, March 2019, Issue 14

6. ibid

7. Huxley, Andrew (2010). "Dr Führer's Wanderjahre: The Early Career of a Victorian Archaeologist". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 20 (4): 490

8. ibid, 20 (4): 489–502.

9. ibid, 20 (4): 490 

10. ibid

11. 20 (4): 489–502

12. ibid

13. ibid

14. ibid, 492

15. ibid, 496–498

16. ibid, 496–498

17. Huxley, Andrew (2011). "Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences". South East Asia Research. 19 (1): 66.

18. Huxley, Andrew (2010). "Dr Führer's Wanderjahre: The Early Career of a Victorian Archaeologist". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 20 (4): 496–498

19. ibid, "Some years later A. Führer undertook the excavation of a temple without much result." in Possehl, Gregory L. (2003). "Ahichchhatra". Oxford Art Online

20. Huxley, Andrew (2010). "Dr Führer's Wanderjahre: The Early Career of a Victorian Archaeologist". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 20 (4): 496–498

21. ibid

22. ibid

23. ibid

24. ibid

25. ibid

26. Huxley, Andrew (2010). "Dr Führer's Wanderjahre: The Early Career of a Victorian Archaeologist". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 20 (4): 494–495.

27. ibid

28. ibid

29. Allen, Charles (2010). The Buddha and Dr Führer: An Archaeological Scandal. Penguin Books India. p. 242, Lüders, H. (1912). "On Some Brahmi Inscriptions in the Lucknow Provincial Museum". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 44: 153–179.

30. ibid

31. Huxley, Andrew (2010). "Dr Führer's Wanderjahre: The Early Career of a Victorian Archaeologist". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 20 (4): 499–502.

32. Huxley, Andrew (2011). "Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences". South East Asia Research. 19 (1): 59–82.

33. Education Society’s Press, Byculla Bombay (1895). The Indian Antiquary Vol-xxiv(1895). p. 275 "Source of Sanskrit words in Burmese"

34. Harvey, G. E. (2019). History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824 The Beginning of the English Conquest. Routledge. p. 211

35. Huxley, Andrew (2011). "Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences". South East Asia Research. 19 (1): 60–61

36. Duroiselle, Charles (1921). A list of inscriptions found in Burma. Rangoon Superintendent, Government Print., Burma. p. ii, note 1.

37. Finot, L. (1922). "Review of Report of the Superintendent, Archæological Survey, Burma, for the year ending 31st March 1921; Report of the Superintendent, Archæological Survey, Burma, for the year ending 31st March 1922; A List of Inscriptions found in Burma. Part 1. The List of Inscriptions arranged in the order of their dates". Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient. 22: 208

38. In 1893 a Nepalese officer on a hunting expedition found an Asokan pillar near Nigliva, at Nigali Sagar." Falk, Harry (January 1998). The discovery of Lumbinī. p. 9

39. Smith, Vincent A. (1897). "The Birthplace of Gautama Buddha". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: 616

40. Führer, Alois Anton (1897). Monograph on Buddha Sakyamuni's birth-place in the Nepalese tarai /. Allahabad : Govt. Press, N.W.P. and Oudh. p. 22

41. Thomas, Edward Joseph (2000). The Life of Buddha as Legend and History. Courier Corporation

42. "On all sides around this interesting monument are ruined monasteries, fallen columns, and broken sculptures." This elaborate description was not supported by a single drawing, plan, or photograph. Every word of it is false." in Rijal, Babu Krishna; Mukherji, Poorno Chander (1996). 100 Years of Archaeological Research in Lumbini, Kapilavastu & Devadaha. S.K. International Publishing House. p. 58.

43. Mukherji, P. C.; Smith, Vincent Arthur (1901). A report on a tour of exploration of the antiquities in the Tarai, Nepal the region of Kapilavastu;. Calcutta, Office of the superintendent of government printing, India. p. 4

44. Falk, Harry (January 1998). The discovery of Lumbinī. p. 11

45. Huxley, Andrew (2010). "Dr Führer's Wanderjahre: The Early Career of a Victorian Archaeologist". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 20 (4): 499–502

46. Bühler, G. (1895). "Some Notes on Past and Future Archœological Explorations in India". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: 649–660, Huxley, Andrew (2010). "Dr Führer's Wanderjahre: The Early Career of a Victorian Archaeologist". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 20 (4): 499–502.

47. Weise, Kai (2013). The Sacred Garden of Lumbini: Perceptions of Buddha's birthplace. UNESCO. pp. 63–64

48. ibid

49. ibid

50. Thomas, Edward J. (2013). The Life of Buddha. Routledge. p. 18, note 3

51. Thomas, Edward J. (2002). History of Buddhist Thought. Courier Corporation. p. 155, note 1.

52. Allen, Charles (2008). The Buddha and Dr Führer: an archaeological scandal. London: Haus

53. Dhammika, Shravasti (2008). Middle Land, Middle Way: A Pilgrim's Guide to the Buddha's India. Buddhist Publication Society. p. 41. Fuhrer's attempt to associate the names of eighteen Sakyas, including Mahanaman, with the structures, on the false claim of writings in pre-Asokan characters, was fortunately foiled in time by V.A. Smith, who paid a surprise visit when the excavation was in progress. The forgery was exposed to the public." in East and West. Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. 1979. p. 66

54. Mukherji, P. C.; Smith, Vincent Arthur (1901). A report on a tour of exploration of the antiquities in the Tarai, Nepal the region of Kapilavastu;. Calcutta, Office of the superintendent of government printing, India. p. 4

55. Ciurtin, Eugen. "Review of Charles ALLEN, The Buddha and Dr Führer: An Archaeological Scandal [New Delhi: Penguin, 2010]": 542.

56. "As pointed out by Smith, in his preparatory note to Mukharji's Report, the inscriptions were 'impudent forgeries', and Führer had even gone to the extent of furnishing as proof fake relics of the Buddha, and a forged inscription of Upagupta, the preceptor of Ashoka..." in Singh, Upinder (2004). The discovery of ancient India: early archaeologists and the beginnings of archaeology. Permanent Black. p. 320. Mukherji, P. C.; Smith, Vincent Arthur (1901). A report on a tour of exploration of the antiquities in the Tarai, Nepal the region of Kapilavastu;. Calcutta, Office of the superintendent of government printing, India. p. 4

57. Huxley, Andrew (2011). "Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences". South East Asia Research. 19 (1): 72–74

58. ibid, 19 (1): 72–74.

59. ibid  19 (1): 72–76

60. 19 (1): 74–77

61. 19 (1): 76–77

62. ibid

63. Beckwith, Christopher I. (2017). Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. Princeton University Press. pp. 234–235

64. Willis, Michael (2012). "Dhār, Bhoja and Sarasvatī: from Indology to Political Mythology and Back". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 22 (1): 152.

65. Huxley, Andrew (2011). "Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences". South East Asia Research. 19 (1): 76–77

66.  ibid, 19 (1): 76–77. Finot, L. (1922). "Review of Report of the Superintendent, Archæological Survey, Burma, for the year ending 31st March 1921; Report of the Superintendent, Archæological Survey, Burma, for the year ending 31st March 1922; A List of Inscriptions found in Burma. Part 1. The List of Inscriptions arranged in the order of their dates". Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient. 22: 208

67. Willis, M. (2012). "Dhar, Bhoja and Sarasvati: From Indology to Political Mythology and Back". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 22 (1): 129–53

68. Führer, Alois Anton (1897). Monograph on Buddha Sakyamuni's birth-place in the Nepalese tarai. Allahabad : Govt. Press, N.W.P. and Oudh

69. Thomas, Edward Joseph (2000). The Life of Buddha as Legend and History. Courier Corporation. p. 18.

70. Mukherji, P. C.; Smith, Vincent Arthur (1901). A report on a tour of exploration of the antiquities in the Tarai, Nepal the region of Kapilavastu;. Calcutta, Office of the superintendent of government printing, India. p. 4

71. ibid

72. Smith, vincent A. (1914). The Early History Of India Ed. 3rd. p. 169

73. Huxley, Andrew (2011). "Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences". South East Asia Research. 19 (1): 65

74. ibid

75. ibid

76. ibid

77. Allen, Charles (2010). The Buddha and Dr Führer: An Archaeological Scandal. Penguin Books India. p. 178

78. ibid

79. Anon, Journal of the Calcutta Mahabodhi Society 10.8-9 (December 1901 and January 1902), p. 1

80. Arx, Urs von (2005). In Marco Jorio, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz vol. 4, Basel: Schwabe

81. Huxley, p 495

82. Phelps, T A, Lumbini on Trial: The Untold Story, 2008. Quoted in Amruta Chintaman Natu, Georg Buhler's Death: Perception and Possibility, 2019, Centre of Jaina Studies, News Letter, SOAS, University of London, March 2019, Issue 14

83. Allen, p 165

84. Allen, 176

© Ramachandran