>Davebabsmith at 11:29, 28 March 2021

2021-03-28T11:29:50Z

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{{Use British English|date=February 2018}}
{{Infobox person
| name =Claudius Buchanan
| image = Image:Claudius Buchanan00.jpg
| image_size = 220px
| caption =
| birth_date = {{Birth date |df=yes|1766|3|12}}
| birth_place = [[Cambuslang]], [[Lanarkshire]]
| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1815|2|9|1766|3|12}}
| death_place = [[Broxbourne]], [[Hertfordshire]]
| nationality = Scottish
| alma_mater = [[University of Glasgow]] <br> [[Queens' College, Cambridge]]
| occupation = Theologian
| known_for =
}}

Rev '''Claudius Buchanan''' [[Doctor of Divinity|DD]] [[FRSE]] (12 March 1766 – 9 February 1815) was a [[Scotland|Scottish]] [[theologian]], an ordained minister of the [[Church of England]], and an [[evangelical]] missionary for the [[Church Missionary Society]].<ref>Adrian Fortescue, ''The Eastern Churches Trilogy'', p366</ref> He served as Vice Provost of the College of Calcutta in India.

==Early life==

Buchanan was born in [[Cambuslang]] near [[Glasgow]].<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf|publisher=Royal Society of Edinburgh|date=July 2006|title=Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh|isbn=090219884X|access-date=14 June 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919152306/https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf|archive-date=19 September 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref> His father, Alexander Buchanan, was the local schoolmaster in [[Inverary]].{{cn|date=January 2020}}

He was educated at the [[University of Glasgow]] and the [[Queens' College, Cambridge]].<ref>{{acad|id=BCNN791C|name=Buchanan, Claudius}}</ref> He was ordained in 1795 by the Bishop of London.

==India==

After holding a [[chaplaincy]] in [[India]] at [[Barrackpur]] (1797–1799), Buchanan was appointed [[Calcutta]] chaplain and vice-principal of the [[college of Fort William]]. In this capacity he did much to advance [[Christianity]] and native education in India, especially by organizing systematic translations of the [[scriptures]].

==First Malayalam Bible==

During a visit to Malabar in 1806, present day South-western state of [[Kerala]], he visited [[Mar Thoma VI]], head of the Malankara Church at [[Angamali]], near [[Kochi, India|Kochi]]. Mar Thoma was very happy to hear Buchanan’s intention of translating the [[Bible]] into [[Malayalam]], the local language, and he presented a Syriac Bible said to be of some antiquity to Buchanan.<ref>Buchanan, Rev. Claudius. Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British [[India]] Page 76.</ref> The Bible was subsequently deposited among the Oriental Manuscripts in the public library of the University of Cambridge.

Work on translation was started the same year by [[Mar Dionysius II|Pulikkottil Joseph Ittoop]] and [[Kayamkulam Philipose Ramban]], with further assistance from Colonel (later General) [[Colin Macaulay]]. Macaulay was British Resident of Travancore at that time. As well as being a senior administrator, Macaulay was a gifted linguist with a keen personal interest in the Christian and Jewish heritage and communities of Travancore. He actively supported Buchanan, attending meetings with senior church leaders as well as facilitating audiences with the Rajah of Travancore to secure his approval too. Buchanan asked Macaulay to undertake the task of supervising the translators. By early 1808 the manuscript was complete and awaiting printing. In March of that year Buchanan left India for England leaving Macaulay in sole charge of the operation. <ref>C.F. Smith, ''A Life of General Colin Macaulay'', (Privately Published, 2019, {{ISBN|978-1-78972-649-7}}), pp. 41. Copies of the book are available from the British Library, the Cambridge University Library, the library of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Bodleian Library, Oxford.</ref>

In January 1806, Buchanan was elected a Fellow of the [[Royal Society of Edinburgh]]. He was also created an honorary DD by [[Cambridge University]].

He died in [[Broxbourne]] in [[Herefordshire]] in 1815 where he was superintending an edition of the Syriac Scriptures (c.f. his extensive memorial inscription). He is buried, along with his wife Mary and two infant children, in the churchyard of [[Holy Trinity Church, Little Ouseburn|Holy Trinity, Little Ouseburn]], North Yorkshire. His former residence, Moat Hall, is adjacent to the church.

===Juggernaut===

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Buchanan was influential in introducing the [[Jagannath]] tradition and [[Hinduism]] to Western audiences in the early 19th-century. He called Jagannath "Juggernaut" and Hindu "Hindoo" in the letters he wrote from India. According to Michael J. Altman, a professor of Religious Studies, Buchanan presented Hinduism through "Juggernaut", as a "bloody, violent, superstitious and backward religious system" that needed to be eliminated and substituted with the Christian gospel.<ref name="altman30"/> He described "Juggernaut" with Biblical terminology for his audience, called him the [[Moloch]], and his shrine as [[Golgatha]] – the place where Jesus Christ was crucified – but with the difference that the "Juggernaut tradition" was of endless meaningless bloodshed, and fabricating allegations that children were sacrificed in the "valley of idolatrous blood shed to false gods".<ref name="altman30"/> In his letters, states Altman, Buchanan "constructed an image of Juggernaut as the diametric opposite of Christianity".<ref name="altman30">{{cite book|author=Michael J. Altman|title=Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UhonDwAAQBAJ |year=2017|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-065492-4|pages=30–32}}</ref> In his book ''Christian Researches in Asia'', published in 1811, Buchanan built on this theme and added licentiousness to it. He called hymns in the language he did not comprehend as "obscene stanzas", artworks on temple walls as "indecent emblems", and described "Juggernaut" and Hinduism to his readers as the religion of disgusting Moloch and false gods. Buchanan's writings formed the "first images of Indian religions" to the evangelical audience in the early 19th century and were promoted by American magazines such as [[The Panoplist]]. His book on "Juggernaut" attracted enough reader demand that it went through numerous editions.<ref name="altman30"/>

Buchanan's pamphlets moved Christian missionaries and triggered a bitter debate between them and officials of the [[East India Company]]. His writings led to many emotional sermons and mission advocates lectured on the need to "combat immorality and convert the unsaved" Indians.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Chancey | first=Karen | title=the Star in the East: the Controversy over Christian Missions to India, 1805–1813 | journal=The Historian | publisher=Wiley-Blackwell | volume=60 | issue=3 | year=1998 | doi=10.1111/j.1540-6563.1998.tb01404.x | pages=507–522}}</ref> The writings of Buchanan and other missionaries constructed and exploited cultural and religious differences, which had a profound and lasting effect on how Americans saw non-Christian peoples.<ref name="altman30"/><ref>{{cite journal | last=Verney | first=Michael A. | title=An Eye for Prices, an Eye for Souls: Americans in the Indian Subcontinent, 1784-1838 | journal=Journal of the Early Republic | publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press | volume=33 | issue=3 | year=2013 | doi=10.1353/jer.2013.0057 | pages=397–431| s2cid=144013420 }}</ref>

==Works==
{{noreferences|section|date=February 2020}}

His main work was an account of his travels in the south and west of India and called ''Christian Researches in Asia'' (Cambridge, 1811). Shortly before publication, in December 1810 Buchanan (whose health was failing) had asked [[Colin Macaulay]] (also recently returned to England) to revise any parts of the manuscript he thought appropriate. He also asked Macaulay to choose the book's title. Upon publication the book became an immediate bestseller, being republished twelve times over the next two years. <ref>''A Life of General Colin Macaulay'', pp. 41-42.</ref>

After Buchanan's return to the [[United Kingdom]] in 1808, he still took an active part in matters connected with India, and, by his book entitled ''Colonial Ecclesiastical Establishment'' ([[London]], 1813), he assisted in settling the controversy of 1813, which eventually ended in the establishment of an Anglican Indian [[episcopate]] in 1878 in the [[Travancore-Cochin]] states. This Church, known as CMS Church, merged with other Churches in South India on 27 September 1947 to form The Church of south [[India]] (CSI).

A collection of 'Sermons on interesting subjects' by Buchanan was published by J Ogle in Edinburgh in 1812. It consists of the texts of eight sermons preached in the Britain between 26 February 1809 and 2 June 1811. The first sermon was entitled "The Star in the East". It was preached in the parish church of St James, Bristol, on the author's return from India.

==References==
{{Reflist}}
*{{EB1911|wstitle=Buchanan, Claudius}}

==Further reading==
* Buchanan, Rev. Claudius, LL.D. Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India. Second Cambridge Edition, 1811.
* Buchanan, Rev. Claudius. "The Star of The East". 1809.

==External links==
{{EB1911 poster|Buchanan, Claudius}}
*[http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/buchanan_claudius.htm Significant Scots: Claudius Buchanan]
*[https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-OO-00001-00001/1 Buchanan Bible] in [[University of Cambridge]] ([https://www.livehistoryindia.com/living-history/2018/12/25/syriac-bible-malabar-to-cambridge Related History])

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Buchanan, Claudius}}
[[Category:Alumni of Queens' College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:Alumni of the University of Glasgow]]
[[Category:Scottish Christian theologians]]
[[Category:Scottish travel writers]]
[[Category:1766 births]]
[[Category:1815 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Cambuslang]]
[[Category:Scottish Anglican missionaries]]
[[Category:Anglican missionaries in India]]
[[Category:British expatriates in India]]

Claudius Buchanan - Revision history

>Davebabsmith at 11:29, 28 March 2021