[BITList] C M Whish.

[John Feltham]

For your information......




Begin forwarded message:

From: "Nick Balmer" <Nicholas.Balmer1 at ntlworld.com>
Date: 23 March 2009 5:55:11 AM
To: <india-british-raj at rootsweb.com>
Subject: [INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ] C M Whish.
Reply-To: india-british-raj at rootsweb.com

Hello Arvind,

Two years ago I discovered that my 4 x great uncle Thomas Baber had  
become
one of the earliest members of the Royal Asiatic Society.  When he had
returned from India to Britain in 1830 he took a very active part in the
Society, chairing
some meetings and giving papers at others. He also deposited lots of  
papers
and artifacts at the Society including
weapons from Malabar and Coorg at the RAS.

When I went to the RAS to look these up, a chance discovery led me to  
Whish.

I already knew that Thomas Baber had spent so much time in the Hindu  
Temples
of North Malabar and at Tellicherry in particular that the temple
authorities
believe to this day that he became a Hindu.

I had also found in the roof of his house was a very odd feature which  
was
very hard to understand the purpose of.

Thomas Baber had collected also collected Granthams (palm leaf books)  
which
he had given to my 3 x great grandfather who ran the British
Library Printed Books Section, where 27 survive to this day.

I have seen several of these and with the help of a Kerala friend have
identified them as 17th century Vedas and the Aryabhatiya.

The RAS Curator said she had a discovered a large box of odd papers in  
the
Malaysian section of her shelves. They were not Malaysian, but they  
might be
from Malabar, would I like a look?

It was obvious to be that these papers were Malabar texts, but of  
course, I
could not read them. There are about thirty fullscap bound books sewn
together with about 30 to forty sheets or more in each. These are  
covered in
very tight and beautiful Malayalam handwriting. Some have Whish's name  
on
them. I am not sure if he wrote them himself, but I know that he could  
read
and write Malayam. I tend to the view that these scripts were copies of
Granthams from temples probably made for him by local copyists.

However written on the margins of some of these texts, and on the blank
pages were masses and masses of calculations, many in logs or for
progressions. There were also geometrical diagrams, and drawings of  
circles
and even a comet in English.

By one of those curious coincidences just days before in search of  
something
cheap to read I had wandered into a second hand book shop, and  
dispairing of
finding any books in my favourite rather isoteric subjects, I had  
picked up
Graham Hancock's book "Underworld, The Mysterious Origins of  
Civilisations."

This fascinating book lays out the fact that 8400 years ago the seas  
were
120 feet lower than they are today, and that most of India's  
civilsations
were on a much lower coast. A series of huge floods happened when a  
massive
meltwater lake on the Canadian Shield and another north of the Hindu  
Kush
had escaped when the climate warmed after the glacial retreat.

His argument includes lots on Hindu calendars and astromny including the
fact that the calendars were made up of Yugas, which act like our  
centuries,
but are based on 72 year cycles. He also mentioned the fact that there  
was a
"Greenwich Meridian" that ran through Ponnani an ancient sea port I have
visited in Kerala. The world also appears to have a 72 degree pattern,  
and
numbers like 48 and 24 were used as multiples of length and  
proportion, as
well as for the numbers of pillars in temples.

Struggling to understand the maths in Whishes annotations (and I am  
not a
happy mathematician except in surveying maths, angles and bearings), I
realised first that these were astronomical calculations, and that the
figure 72 kept coming up. If I had gone to that library two weeks  
early I
would not have had even a cue that the figure was in any way  
significant. If
you are not familar with Indian Astronomy and maths you might like this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_school_of_astronomy_and_mathematics

There was a date of 22nd July 1819 on the drawing of the Comet.  
Searching
the web, and with the help of a kindly American Professor, I have
established that this was Blanquaires Comet.

Blanquair actually discovered it in Paris some weeks after Whish had  
seen it
in Kerala. However Whish was expecting it,  unlike Blanquaire and  
another
Russian astronomer who vies for the right to have his name attached to  
this
particular comet, for whom it was a surprise when it turned up in
their telescopes.

Whish knew it was coming because he had either met or read Sancara  
Varmas
works, which had told him it would reappear every 39 years.

I have also found some work from 1913 by a Czech researcher that  
establishes
where the individual texts were prepared, and when. This shows that  
Whish
visited
Tellicherry every November, where he stayed with Baber. In the roof of
Baber's house there is a floor under a section of ceiling in the roof  
that
appears to be removable. On the walls are fitted cupboards, which  
would be
highly suitable for upright objects like telescopes and their tripods.  
The
floor of magnificent teak, has been deliberately chipped, I believe to  
stop
the legs of tripods supporting telescopes from slipping.

Also in the RAS library is a lovely little book of paintings of gods and
temple Brahmins by an Indian artist. These drawings were prepared to  
teach
Thomas Baber the Hindu Gods and included his teachers, who turn out  
often to
be connected to temples with particularly strong connections to  
astronomy.

This is a huge subject, and one which I am deeply into researching at
present: it is too much for this post alone. In brief, they had  
realised or
been told by these Brahmins that the Vedas were several thousand years  
old
in parts, and that these texts contained calendars and maths going  
back over
3000, and possibly up to
5000 years earlier.

It appears that Whish and probably Baber as well realised that by  
about 1822
that most of the maths that is attributed to Greek discoverers like
Pythagoras was not in fact first invented by the Greeks at all, but by
Indians and very possibly Indians from Kerala.

Remember that both of these men would have spent their teenage  
immensed in
Greek and Latin texts, and that they would have been inspired by all  
things
Greek. The Greek texts were fundamental to his brothers life. His  
brother
organised the printing of a facsimile of the Alexandra Codex, and his  
great
grandfathers library had been one of the most complete for Greek and  
Latin
classics when it was sold in 1766.

His brother is painted in a portrait by Archer with the other  
officials of
the British Library in front of the newly acquired Elgin Marbles.

Thomas Baber for instance had been involved in building St John's  
Church in
Cannanore, which is clearly inspired by Greek temples, and Whish
worked at East Hill at Calicut in a building who's design appears to be
based on Virgils texts on how to build a Roman Villa.

It must have taken quite a bit of debate to turn away from the widely  
held
view that the Greeks were the fount of all civilisation, to a view of  
life
where perhaps these Indian's amongst who they were living, and who in  
those
non PC days were probably seen as some sort of lesser beings, coming  
from an
Arcadian
past tied to Coconut trees and paddy fields had in fact beaten their  
beloved
Greeks to make these discoveries centuries before the Greeks had done  
so,
and perhaps it was they who had taught the Greeks about these  
calculations
in the first place.

They started to give papers and to discuss this with people at the  
Madras
Literary Society where they must have had a sceptical audience, but at  
least
some of these people were supportive. I don't have this all written up  
yet,
but I am aware that Whish's ideas were widely discussed at this time.  
Sadly
Whish died in 1833, and when Thomas went back to England in 1830 he  
appears
to have taken papers with him, and to have discussed these ideas in  
London
probably in the RAS. He may well have been to the Royal Society  
because his
brother was a member of that body.

Whish brother eventually sent Whish's papers to the RAS.

There was a powerful reactionary backlash to Whish's ideas and  
theories that
rumbled on in the background.  Several papers were published that  
attempted
to
destroy Whish's calculations in the 1860's including the ones you quote.

There is a lot of literature today published on the web and elsewhere  
that
are making the same points that Whish made. I am unsure of the extent  
that
these are based on Whish's work, or if they are other people all  
coming by
different routes to the same conclusion.

I have been trying to get a university with a bright young Malayalam  
speaker
to sponsor him so that I could get him to work with me on these  
texts.  It
is absolutely fascinating, and I have even been seriously considering  
trying
to learn Malayalam, but I think that might be beyond me. The maths is
fascinating, but again it is something I would need to work on a great  
deal
to get to.

The bit about Charles Philip Brown is interesting. I believe, but am not
entirely sure, that he was a brother or grandson of Murdoch Brown from
Tellicherry. This gives a whole added twist to the rivalry between the
various expats in Malabar. Murdoch Brown was by 1799 and extremely able
linguist able to translate Malayalam with ease. He was an adventurer,  
not
particularly troubled by commerical ethics or adverse to taking a  
bribe. He
also engaged in slavery.

He probably had unrivalled knowledge of the local society, far above  
that of
the other Europeans there. Thomas Baber and Whish were younger men with
different attitudes and beliefs. They came to have similar and perhaps  
even
better language skills even than Brown. They also experienced peaceful
periods and had the lesure to study at length in Hindu Temples. They  
came to
understand Indian culture in a way few other Europeans have ever been  
able
to. They had the time, opportunity and inclination.

Brown was taken to court by Baber for slavery. Brown's son challenged  
Baber
to a duel, and spent time in gaol for doing so.  Baber was at odds with
virtually all the other Europeans in Tellicherry and the surrounding
district. He waged campaigns against their corruption, inefficiency etc.
etc. It was a very difficult time, and I expect that his advocating with
Whish that Indians were as capable as anybody in the World of first rate
science, and that they could actually learn if educated, must have  
gone down
like a lead balloon with men who wished to destroy the society so that  
they
could enslave it to run pepper plantations in much the same way the  
Southern
States of America were being run or the West Indies.

I believe that this gave an added twist to the dislike of Whish,  
because he
was a friend of Baber's. Was Charles Philip Brown Murdoch's son or  
grandson?
He definitely had a son called Francis Carnac Brown who in mid to old  
age
became very knowledgeable about Malabar society and eventually joined in
campaigning against slavery.

I would love to hear from your Swiss Professor.

Sorry to everybody else who gets this long email, but this is a huge
subject. I have over two hundred pages of notes already on the subject.

Regards

Nick Balmer






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