EDWARD BACKHOUSE

See also:

• EDWARD BACKHOUSE EASTWICK (1814–1883)

EASTWICK (1814–1883)  , British Orientalist, was born in 1814, a member of an Anglo-Indian family . Educated at Charterhouse and at Oxford, he joined the Bombay infantry in 1836, but, owing to his talent for languages, was soon given a political post . In 1843 he translated the Persian Kessahi Sanjdn, or History of the Arrival of the Parsecs in India; and he wrote a Life of Zoroaster, a Sindhi vocabulary, and various papers in the transactions of the Bombay Asiatic Society . Compelled by ill-health to return to Europe, he went to Frankfort, where he learned German and translated Schiller's Revolt of the Netherlands and Bopp's Comparative Grammar . In 1845 he was appointed professor of Hindustani at Haileybury College . Two years later he published a Hindustani grammar, and, in subsequent years, a new edition of the Gulistdn, with a translation in prose and verse, also an edition with vocabulary of the Hindi translation by Lail-6. of Chatur Chuj Misr's Prem Sagdr, and translations of the Bagh-o-Bahar, and of the Anvdr-i Suhaili of Bfdpaf . In 1851 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1857–1858 he edited The Autobiography of Latfullah . He also edited for the Bible Society the Book of Genesis in the Dakhani language . From 186o to 1863 he was in Persia as secretary to the British Legation, publishing on his return The Journal of a Diplomate . In r866 he became private secretary to the secretary of state for India, Lord Cranborne (afterwards marquess of Salisbury), and in 1867 went, as in 1864, on a government mission to Venezuela . On his return he wrote, at the request of Charles Dickens, for All the Year Round, " Sketches of Life in a South American Republic." From 1868 to 1874 he was M.P. for Penryn and Falmouth .

In 1875 he received the degree of M.A. with the

franchise from the university of Oxford, " as a slight recognition of distinguished services." At various times he wrote several of Murray's Indian hand-books . His last work was the Kaisarnamah-i-Hind (" the lay of the empress "), in two volumes (1878-1882) . He died at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, on the 16th of July 1883 .