Charles Matthew Whish (1794–1833) was an English

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service offic ...

in the Madras Establishment of the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

. Whish was the first to bring to the notice of the western mathematical scholarship the achievements of the

Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics The Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics or the Kerala school was a school of Indian mathematics, mathematics and Indian astronomy, astronomy founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Kingdom of Tanur, Tirur, Malappuram district, Malappuram, K ...

. Whish wrote in his historical paper: Kerala mathematicians had ''... laid the foundation for a complete system of

fluxion A fluxion is the instantaneous rate of change, or gradient, of a fluent (a time-varying quantity, or function) at a given point. Fluxions were introduced by Isaac Newton to describe his form of a time derivative (a derivative with respect to t ...

s ...'' and their works ''... abound with fluxional forms and series to be found in no work of foreign countries''. Whish was also a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and had prepared a grammar and a dictionary of the

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

language. C.M. Whish was a collector of palm-leaf

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

s in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

and other languages. After his premature death in 1833 at the age of thirty-eight years, Whish's brother, J.L. Whish, who was also employed in the service of

deposited these manuscripts in the

Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society, was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encourag ...

in July 1836. A catalogue of these manuscripts list 195 items. Though the manuscripts collected by Whish are not distinguished by great age, there are many rare and valuable ones among them. Perhaps the most important of all are the

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...

manuscripts which represent a distinct recension of the great epic. These manuscripts were related a wide range of subjects:

vedic literature FIle:Atharva-Veda samhita page 471 illustration.png, upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the ''Atharvaveda''. The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of relig ...

, ancient

epic poetry In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard t ...

classical Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest ...

Literature, and technical and scientific literature. He joined the service of

in 1812 as Register of Zillah Court in South Malabar and rose up the judicial ladder to become finally a Criminal Judge at

Cuddapah Kadapa is a city in the southern part of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is located in the Rayalaseema region, and is the district headquarters of YSR Kadapa district. It is located south of the Penna River. The city is surrounded on three sides b ...

. Cuddapah Town Cemetery had a tomb in the name of C.M. Whish with the inscription "Sacred to the memory of C.M. Whish, Esquire of the Civil Service, who departed this life on the 14th April 1833, aged 38 years".

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Further reading