Robert Caldwell (7 May 1814 – 28 August 1891) was a British

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

and linguist. A missionary for the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed tradition, Reformed in outlook, with ...

, he arrived in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

at age 24, and studied the local language to spread the word of the Bible in a vernacular language, studies that led him to author a text on comparative grammar of the South Indian languages. In his book, Caldwell proposed that there are Dravidian words in the Hebrew of the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

, the archaic Greek language, and the places named by

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

. Caldwell married Eliza Mault, the daughter of another missionary Rev. Charles Mault posted in India. He served as assistant bishop of

Tirunelveli Tirunelveli (), also known as Nellai and historically (during British rule) as Tinnevelly, is a major city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the administrative headquarters of the Tirunelveli District. It is the fourth-largest munici ...

from 1877. The

Government of Tamil Nadu The Government of Tamil Nadu () is the administrative body responsible for the governance of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Chennai is the capital of the state and houses the state executive, legislature and head of judiciary. Under the Const ...

has created a memorial in his honor and a postage stamp has been issued in his name. A statue of Caldwell was erected in 1967 near to

Marina Beach Marina Beach, or simply the Marina, is a natural urban beach in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, along the Bay of Bengal. The beach runs from near Fort St. George in the north to Foreshore Estate in the south, a distance of , making it the second longest ...

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

, as a gift of the Church of South India.

Early life

Robert Caldwell was born at Clady,

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. Its county town is Omagh. Adjoined to the south-west shore of Lough Neagh, the cou ...

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. on 7 May 1814 to poor Ulster Scots

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...

parents. The family moved to

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

and there he began work at the age of nine. Mostly self-taught, he returned to Ireland aged 15, living with an older brother in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

while studying art between 1829 and 1833. He then returned to Glasgow, probably as a consequence of a crisis of faith, and he became active in the

Congregational church Congregationalism (also Congregational Churches or Congregationalist Churches) is a Reformed Christian (Calvinist) tradition of Protestant Christianity in which churches practice congregational government. Each congregation independently a ...

. Caldwell won a scholarship to

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world. With a governing body of a master and aro ...

only to find it rescinded when the authorities discovered that he had been born in Ireland. He responded by joining the

, who sent him to the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

for training. There Caldwell came under the influence of Daniel Keyte Sandford, a professor of

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and promoter of

Anglicanism Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

whose innovative research encouraged Caldwell's liking for comparative

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

and also theology. Caldwell left university with a distinction and was ordained as a Congregationalist minister. At 24, Caldwell arrived in Madras on 8 January 1838 as a missionary of the London Missionary Society and later joined the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Mission (SPG). To further his missionary objectives, Caldwell realized that he had to be proficient in

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

to proselytize "the masses?" and he began a systematic study of the language. He was consecrated Bishop of

in 1877. In 1844, Caldwell married Eliza Mault (1822–1899) in CSI Home Church, Nagercoil, with whom he had seven children. Eliza Mault, born in

Nagercoil Nagercoil, natively spelt as Nāgarkovil (, "Temple of the Nāgas", or Nagaraja-Temple), is a Municipal Corporation city and the administrative headquarters of Kanyakumari District in Tamil Nadu state, India. Situated close to the tip of the ...

, was the younger daughter of the veteran

Travancore The kingdom of Travancore (), also known as the kingdom of Thiruvithamkoor () or later as Travancore State, was a kingdom that lasted from until 1949. It was ruled by the Travancore Royal Family from Padmanabhapuram, and later Thiruvanan ...

missionary, Rev. Charles Mault (1791–1858) of the London Missionary Society. For more than forty years, Eliza worked in Idaiyangudi and Tirunelveli proselytizing the people, especially Tamil-speaking women.

Caldwell's ''Comparative Grammar''

Robert Caldwell wrote '' A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages''. He identified south Indian Brahmins with Indo-Europeans, which was partly based on his belief that the Indo-Europeans had "higher mental gifts and higher capacity for civilisation". Caldwell asserted that the low-caste Chanar were not merely

speakers but an "indigenous Dravidian" people, distinct ethnically and, most critically for him, religiously, from their high-caste oppressors, whom he referred to as "Brahmanical Aryans" (in this case "Aryan" as an ethnic signifier for foreign and "Brahmanical" to signify the "Hinduism" of the high-caste). These wildly speculative claims, well outside the scope of linguistics, were intended "to develop a history which asserted that the indigenous Dravidians had been subdued and colonized by the Brahmanical Aryans". However, the first edition of Caldwell's grammar was "met with firm resistance" by the Chanars precisely because they "did not like the idea of being divorced from Brahmanical civilization", the very division Caldwell was hoping to exploit. The book has been described as being on occasion "pejorative, outrageous, and somewhat paternalistic. But on the whole, his studies represent a pioneering effort to understand religions completely foreign to the British mind". In the domain of Dravidian linguistics though, it remains a respected work today. RCaldwellRemains

Archaeological research

While serving as Bishop of Tirunelveli (alongside Edward Sargent), Caldwell (who was not a trained archaeologist) did much original research on the history of Tirunelveli. He studied palm leaf manuscripts and

Sangam literature The Sangam literature (Tamil language, Tamil: சங்க இலக்கியம், ''caṅka ilakkiyam''), historically known as 'the poetry of the noble ones' (Tamil language, Tamil: சான்றோர் செய்யுள், ''Cā ...

in his search, and made several excavations, finding the foundations of ancient buildings, sepulchral urns and coins with the fish emblem of the Pandyan Kingdom. This work resulted in his book ''A Political and General History of the District of Tinnevely'' (1881), published by the Government of the

Madras Presidency The Madras Presidency or Madras Province, officially called the Presidency of Fort St. George until 1937, was an administrative subdivision (province) of British India and later the Dominion of India. At its greatest extent, the presidency i ...

Legacy

Caldwell’s mission lasted more than fifty years. The publication of his research into both the languages and the history of the region, coupled with his position in both Indian and English society, gave stimulus to the revival of the Non-Brahmin movement. Meanwhile, on difficult ground for evangelism, Caldwell achieved Christian conversion among the lower castes. He had adopted some of the methods of the Lutheran missionaries of earlier times, having learned German purely in order to study their practices. Caldwell the

Tamil language Tamil (, , , also written as ''Tamizhil'' according to linguistic pronunciation) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. It is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world,. "Tamil is one of ...

scholar, Christian evangelist and champion of the native church, remains today an important figure in the modern history of South India. He is still remembered there, and his statue, erected eighty years after his death, stands near the Marina Beach at Chennai. The Indian historian Dr M.S.S. Pandian, visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, recently commented that Caldwell’s "contribution to both Christianity in South India and the cultural awakening of the region is unmatched during the last two hundred years". A commemorative postage stamp on him was issued on 7 May 2010.

Works

* ''Lectures on the Tinnevelly missions, descriptive of the field, the work, and the results: with an introductory lecture on the progress of Christianity in India.'' Bell and Daldy, 1857 * ''The best means of promoting an interest in missions among our congregations : being a speech delivered by ... Bishop Caldwell at the Diocesan Church Conference on Thursday 20 March 1879.'' 1880 (Madras : S.P.C.K. Press) * ''Christianity and Hinduism. A lecture addressed to educated Hindus, etc.'' : S.P.C.K.: London, 879.* ''A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages.'' Harrison: London, 1856. * ''Evangelistic Work amongst the Higher Classes and Castes in Tinnevelly.'' Rev. Dr. Caldwell’s Third Journal. 876.* ''The Inner Citadel of Religion.'' S.P.C.K.: London, 879.* ''The March of the Unsaved.'' religious tract. G. Stoneman: London, 896.* ''Narkaruṇait tiyānamālai = A companion to the holy communion.'' Madras Diocesan Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1871. * ''The Prince of Wales in Tinnevelly, and "From Delahay Street to Edeyengoody.".'' London : S.P.C.K., 1876. * ''Observations on the Kudumi.'' J. J. Craen: adras?1867. * ''Report of the Edeyenkoody District for the year ending 30 June 1845.'' London : Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1847. * ''On reserve in communicating religious instruction to non- Christians in mission schools in India'' : a letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Madras. Madras : S.P.C.K. Press, 1879. * ''The Relation of Christianity to Hinduism.'' R. Clay, Sons, & Taylor: London, 885.* ''Records of the Early History of the Tinnevelly Mission, etc.'' Higginbotham & Co.: Madras, 1881. * ''The Tinnevelly Shanars : a sketch of their religion and their moral condition and characteristics : with special reference to the facilities and hindrances to the progress of Christianity amongst them.'' London : Clay for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1850. * ''The Three Way-marks.'' Christian Vernacular Education Society: Madras, 1860. * ''A Political and General History of the District of Tinnevelly, in the Presidency of Madras, from the earliest period to its cession to the English Government in A.D. 1801.'' Madras : E. Keys, 1881.

Notes