| Product
Code |
: |
PUD NO_841-1 AE |
| Subject | : | John Borthwick Gilchrist |
| Size | : | 57 mm |
| Metal | : | Copper |
| Year | : | 1841 |
| Description | : | obv. Bust of Gilchrist, slightly right. Around border : JOHN BORTHWICK GILCHRIST * BORN 1759 * DIED 1841 * Signed : C. VOIGT, rev. A seated angel, instructing three children holding educational materials. In exergue : FIAT LVX (Let there be light).
Carl Friedrich Voigt was a German medalist and engraver who worked in London for Benedetto Pistrucci in 1825 and 1826 before returning to Germany where he became the Chief Engraver at the Munich Mint. He obviously kept up contacts in London as witnessed by this medal.
John Borthwick Gilchrist went out to Calcutta as an assistant surgeon with the East India Company in 1783. He was a superb linguist and went about the Bengal countryside in native dress to acquire a better knowledge of Hindustani (Urdu), which had not at that time been systematized, and he was the first to reduce the language to a system, producing a dictionary and grammar, and popularizing the study of the language. He was also well versed in Sanskrit, Persian and Hindi and was thus a natural choice to be appointed by the Governor-General, Marquess Wellesley, as the first Principal of Fort William College in 1800. He returned to Edinburgh in 1804 due to ill health and later briefly acted as Oriental Professor at Haileybury, taught oriental languages privately and spent eight years, 1818 to 1826, as Professor of Hindustani at the Oriental Institution. He died in Paris in 1841, a scholarship in his name was founded in Calcutta. |
