John Zephaniah Holwell (17 September 1711 – 5 November 1798) was a surgeon, an employee of the
British East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...
, and a temporary
Governor of Bengal (1760). He was also one of the first Europeans to
study Indian antiquities and was an early advocate of
animal rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their Utilitarianism, utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding s ...
and vegetarianism.
Biography
Holwell was a survivor of the
Black Hole of Calcutta
The Black Hole of Calcutta was a dungeon in Fort William, Calcutta, measuring , in which troops of Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, held British prisoners of war on the night of 20 June 1756. John Zephaniah Holwell, one of the Britis ...
, June 1756, the incident in which British subjects and others were crammed into a small poorly ventilated chamber overnight, with many deaths. Howell's account of this incident (1757) obtained wide circulation in England and some claim this gained support for the East India Company's conquest of India. His account of the incident was not publicly questioned during his lifetime nor for more than a century after his death. However, in recent years, his version of the event has been called into question by many historians.
Holwell has also become an important source for modern historians of medicine, as a result of his description of the practice of
smallpox variolation in eighteenth-century Bengal, ''An Account of the Manner of Inoculating for the Small Pox in the East Indies with Some Observations on the Practice and Mode of Treating that Disease in those Parts'' (London, 1767).
Born in Dublin, he grew up in London, and studied medicine at
Guy's Hospital
Guy's Hospital is an NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in central London. It is part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and one of the institutions that comprise the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. ...
.
He gained employment as a surgeon in the British East India Company and was sent to India in 1732. He served in this capacity until 1749. In 1751, he was appointed as
zemindar of the
Twenty-four Parganas District of Bengal.
He then served as a member of the Council of
Fort William (
Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
) and defended the settlement against
Siraj Ud Daulah in 1756. He later succeeded
Robert Clive as temporary
Governor
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
of
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
in 1760, but was dismissed from the Council in 1761 for remonstrating against the appointment of
Henry Vansittart
Henry Vansittart (3 June 1732 – 1770) was an English colonial administrator, who was the Governor of Bengal from 1759 to 1764.
Life
Vansittart was born in Bloomsbury in Middlesex, the third son of Arthur van Sittart (1691–1760), and his w ...
as Governor of Bengal. He was elected Fellow of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
in 1767.
Study of Hinduism
Holwell was one of the first British travellers to study
Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
.
[Trautmann, Thomas R. (1997). ''Aryans and British India''. University of California Press. pp. 68–72. ] He came to believe that the
Hindu scriptures
Hindu texts are manuscripts and voluminous historical literature which are related to any of the diverse traditions within Hinduism. A few of these texts are shared across these traditions and they are broadly considered Hindu scriptures. These ...
completed and unlocked a secret meaning of the Bible. He wrote about this in the second and third volumes of his work ''Interesting Historical Events, Relative to the Provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Indostan'' (1765–1771).
Holwell was a believer in
metempsychosis
Metempsychosis ( grc-gre, μετεμψύχωσις), in philosophy, is the Reincarnation#Conceptual definitions, transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death. The term is derived from ancient Greek philosophy, and has be ...
(transmigration of souls).
He came to the conclusion that the fundamental doctrine of the brahmins was that God (the Eternal one) had created angelic beings but they rebelled and so were condemned to be punished, with the possibility of earning a return to grace by passing through a series of rebirths to regain paradise. He held the view that all animals and humans were fallen angels.
Howell suggested that the Greeks and Egyptians took their belief in metempsychosis from the brahmins. Holwell stated that all religions have much in common but only the Hindu scriptures have all the truths fully articulated. He wrote that
Moses's version of the creation and
Fall of Man
The fall of man, the fall of Adam, or simply the Fall, is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience.
*
*
*
* The doctrine of the ...
is "clogged with too many incomprehensible difficulties to gain our belief", and is only made intelligible with the Hindu doctrine that humankind are fallen angels.
Holwell was a
vegetarian
Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter.
Vegetariani ...
and opposed the
Cartesian view that animals are machines without souls.
He argued that animals were not created for domination or use by man. He stated that meat and the killing of animals is a violation of man's original nature and is the cause of moral and physical evil.
Holwell believed that metempsychosis accounted for the problem of
Original sin as the Fall of Man had occurred in heaven long before the creation of
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman. They are central to the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. ...
who were fallen angels. In regard to Christianity, Holwell identified as a Christian
deist
Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin '' deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation ...
, which was consistent with his belief in transmigration of souls and his enthusiasm for Hinduism.
Publications
By Holwell:
*''A Genuine Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen and others who were suffocated in the Black Hole'' (London, 1758)
*''Interesting Historical Events, Relative to the Provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Indostan With a seasonable hint and perswasive to the honourable the court of directors of the East India Company. As also the mythology and cosmogony, fasts and festivals of the Gentoo's, followers of the Shastah. And a dissertation on the metempsychosis, commonly, though erroneously, called the Pythagorean doctrine'', 3 vols. (London, 1765–1771)
*''An Account of the Manner of Inoculating for the Small Pox in the East Indies with Some Observations on the Practice and Mode of Treating that Disease in those Parts'' (London, 1767).
References
*
See also
*
Urs App (2010). ''The Birth of Orientalism''. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (); contains a 66-page chapter (pp. 297–362) on Holwell.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holwell, John Zephaniah
1711 births
1798 deaths
18th-century British writers
British animal rights scholars
British deists
British East India Company people
British immunologists
British Indologists
British orientalists
British surgeons
British vegetarianism activists
Fellows of the Royal Society
Milford Haven
Medical doctors from Dublin (city)