James Prinsep

He was the founding editor of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and is best remembered for deciphering the Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts of ancient India.

He studied, documented and illustrated many aspects of numismatics, metallurgy, meteorology apart from pursuing his career in India as an assay master at the mint in Benares.

His connections helped him find work for all his sons and several members of the Prinsep family rose to high positions in India.

He showed a talent for detailed drawing and mechanical invention and this made him study architecture under the gifted but eccentric Augustus Pugin.

Within a year at Calcutta, he was sent by his superior, the eminent orientalist Horace Hayman Wilson, to work as assay master at the Benares mint.

[3] In 1833 he called for reforms to Indian weights and measures and advocated a uniform coinage based on the new silver rupee of the East India Company.

He helped design an arched tunnel to drain stagnant lakes and improve the sanitation of the densely populated areas of Benares and built a stone bridge over the Karamansa river.

When he moved to Calcutta, he offered to help complete a canal that had been planned by his brother Thomas but left incomplete by the latter's death in 1830.

Captain Herbert, however, was posted as Astronomer to the King of Oudh in 1830, leaving the journal to the editorship of James Prinsep, who was himself the primary contributor to it.

Prinsep became the founding editor of this journal and contributed articles on chemistry, mineralogy, numismatics and on the study of Indian antiquities.

[10] As a result of Prinsep's work as an editor of the Asiatic Society's journal, coins and copies of inscriptions were transmitted to him from all over India, to be deciphered, translated, and published.

The idea of Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, a collection of Indian epigraphy, was first suggested by Prinsep and the work was formally begun by Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1877.

[32] A talented artist and craftsman, Prinsep made meticulous sketches of ancient monuments, astronomy, instruments, fossils and other subjects.

It was initially thought to be related to a liver (bilious) condition and he was forced to get away from his studies and left for England in November 1838 aboard the Herefordshire.

Prinsep Ghat, a Palladian porch on the bank of the Hooghly River designed by W. Fitzgerald in 1843, was erected in his memory by the citizens of Calcutta.

Young James drawn by his sister Emily
A Preacher Expounding The Poorans. In The Temple of Unn Poorna, Benares . Lithograph by Prinsep (1835)
Lithograph of Kupuldhara Tulao, Benares by Prinsep (1834)
Bairat inscription, on which Prinsep worked to decipher Brahmi. On display in the Asiatic Society . See commemorative plate in honour of James Prinsep .
Prinsep used bilingual Indo-Greek coins to decipher Kharoshthi . Obverse and reverse legends in Greek "Basileos Sotēros Menandroy" and Kharosthi "Maharaja Tratasa Menandrasa": "Of The Saviour King Menander".
The last two letters at the end of this inscriptions in Brahmi were guessed to form the word "dǎnam" (donation), which appears at the end of most inscriptions at Sanchi and Bharhut . This hypothesis permitted the complete decipherment of the Brahmi script by James Prinsep in 1837. [ 11 ] [ 12 ] [ 13 ]
Consonants of the Brahmi script , and their evolution down to modern Devanagari , according to James Prinsep, as published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in March 1838. [ 14 ]
Prinsep Ghat at Kolkata (Calcutta)
Portrait by Colesworthey Grant (c. 1838)