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Brian Houghton Hodgson From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Brian Houghton Hodgson.

Brian Houghton Hodgson (February 1, 1800 – May 23, 1894[1]) was an early naturalist and ethnologist working in British India where he was an English civil servant. Contents [hide]

* 1 Life and career o 1.1 Ethnology and anthropology o 1.2 Educational reform o 1.3 Ornithology and natural history * 2 Return to England * 3 Publications * 4 Notes * 5 References * 6 External links

[edit] Life and career

Hodgson was born at Lower Beech, Prestbury, Cheshire.[2] He went to study at Haileybury and showed an aptitude for languages. At the end of his first term (May 1816) he obtained a prize for Bengali. He passed Haileybury with a gold medal.[3]

At the age of seventeen he travelled to India as a writer in the British East India Company. He was sent to Kathmandu in Nepal as Assistant Commissioner in 1819, becoming British Resident in 1833. He travelled in the Kumaon region during 1819-20 He studied the Nepalese people, producing a number of papers on their languages, literature and religion.

[edit] Ethnology and anthropology

Hodgson had a keen interest in the culture of the people of the Himalayan regions. He believed that racial affinities could be identified on the basis of linguistics and he was influenced by the works of Sir William Jones, Friedrich Schlegel, Blumenbach and J. C. Prichard. From his studies he believed that the ‘aboriginal’ populations of the Himalayas were not ‘Aryans’ or ‘Caucasians’, but a race he termed as the ‘Tamulian’, who he claimed were unique to India.[4]

[edit] Educational reform