BUCHANAN, Claudius (born Claud Buchanan). Cambuslang near Glasgow, Lanarkshire 12.3.1766 — Broxbourne, Hertfordshire 9.2.1815. Rev. British (Scottish) Missionary in India. Son of Alexander Buchanan, a schoolmaster, and Janet Somers, educated in Inverary. Studies at Glasgow 1782-84 and 1786 and, after several years’ interval spent in London, from 1791 at Cambridge (B.A. 1795), ordained priest 1796. In 1797-1808 in India working for Church Missionary Society, first 1797-99 as chaplain at Barrackpur and from 1799 in Calcutta as chaplain to the E.I.C. and Vice-Provost of Fort William College. At College he also taught Greek, Latin and English classics. In 1806-07 travelled in South India and Sri Lanka, i.al. visiting Thomas Christians in Kerala. Returned in 1808 to England, he lived in Yorkshire, then in Hertfordshire, editing the Syriac New Testament of Thomas Christians, which was left incomplete. Hon. D.D. of Glasgow (1804), Aberdeen, St. Andrews, Dublin and Cambridge universities. Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh 1806. Twice married, first 1799 with Mary Whish (d. 1805), then with n.n., finally widower, two daughters with the first wife.
Buchanan was a friend of Carey and much interested in missionary work and Bible translation. He supervised the translation of the Bible into Malayālam. He is mainly remembered in the history of Christian mission in India, but he also had a notorious role in showing Hinduism as a “bloody, violent, superstitious and backward religious system” using the cult of Jagannāth (for him “Juggernaut”) as “proof”. He knew Hindustani and Persian.
Publications: Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India; both as a Means of Perpetuating the Christian Religion among our own Countrymen; and as a Foundation for the Ultimate Civilization of the Natives. 96 p. Cambridge 1805.
– Christian Researches in Asia. 260 p. Cambridge 1811 (on his travels).
– Colonial Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India. 199 p. L. 1813.
– A few religious books.
Sources: A.J.A[rbuthnot], D.N.B. 7, 1886, 182-184; Buckland, Dictionary; *H. Pearson, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Claudius Buchanan, D.D. 1-2. Oxford 1817; W.R. Shenk, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. N.Y. 1998, 98f. (with portrait); Wikipedia with the same portrait.
Last Updated on 1 week by Admin
