Fort William College - The College

The College

The College of Fort William emerged as both a centre of research and a publication unit, a cradle of creativity as well as scholarship. Planned originally to train probationer British civilians in the languages and cultures of the subjugated country, the college rendered services tantamount to those of a university in promoting modern Indian literatures, Bengali in particular… Under the leadership of William Carey, the College could also claim credit for drawing together Sanskrit pandits and Perso-Arabic munshis to reshape Bengali prose… The variety of the College’s publication also deserve note. From colloquies and popular stories, chronicles and legends, to definitive editions of literary texts.

Fort William College aimed at training British officials in Indian languages and in the process it fostered the development of languages such as Bengali and Hindi. The period is of historical importance. In 1815, Ram Mohan Roy settled in Calcutta. It is considered by many historians to be starting point of the Bengal renaissance. A establishment of The Calcutta Madrassa in 1781, the Asiatic Society in 1784 and the Fort William College in 1800, completed the first phase of Kolkata’s emergence as an intellectual centre.

Teaching of Asian languages dominated: Arabic, Hindustani, Persian, Sanskrit, Bengali; and later Marathi and even Chinese were added. Each department of the college was staffed by notable scholars. The Persian department was headed by Neile B. Edmonstone, Persian translator to the government. His assistant teacher was John H. Harington, a judge of Sadar Diwani Adalat and Francis Gladwin, a soldier diplomat. For Arabic studies, there was Lt. John Baillie, a noted Arabist. The Hindustani language department was entrusted to John Borthwick Gilchrist, an Indologist of great repute. H.T. Colebroooke, the famous orientalist, was head of the Sanskrit department. William Carey, a non-civilian missionary and a specialist in many Indian languages, was selected to head the department of vernacular languages. While notable scholars were identified and appointed for different languages, there was no suitable person in Kolkata who could be appointed to teach Bengali. In those days the Brahmin scholars learnt only Sanskrit, considered to be the language of the gods, and did not study Bengali. The authorities decided to appoint Carey, who was with the Baptist Mission in Serampore. He, in turn, appointed Mrityunjoy Vidyalankar as head pandit, Ramnath Bachaspati as second pandit and Ramram Bose as one of the assistant pandits.

Along with teaching, translations were organized. The college employed more than one hundred local linguists. At that time there were no textbooks available in Bengali. On 23 April 1789, Calcutta Gazette published the humble request of several Natives of Bengal for a Bengali grammar and dictionary.