George Uglow Pope (24 April 1820 – 11 February 1908), or G. U. Pope, was an

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...

who spent 40 years in

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

and translated many

texts into

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

. His popular translations included those of the

Tirukkural The ''Tirukkuṟaḷ'' ( ta, திருக்குறள், lit=sacred verses), or shortly the ''Kural'' ( ta, குறள்), is a classic Tamil language text consisting of 1,330 short couplets, or kurals, of seven words each. The tex ...

and

Thiruvasagam ''Thiruvasagam'' ( ta, திருவாசகம், tiruvācakam, translit-std=IAST, lit=sacred utterance) is a volume of Tamil hymns composed by the ninth century Shaivite '' bhakti'' poet Manikkavasagar. It contains 51 compositions and cons ...

. He later took to teaching, running his own school in

Ootacamund Ooty (), officially known as Udhagamandalam (also known as Ootacamund (); abbreviated as Udhagai), is a city and a municipality in the Nilgiris district of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located north west of Coimbatore and ...

for while and then moving to head the

Bishop Cotton Boys' School Bishop Cotton Boys' School is an all-boys school for boarders and day scholars in Bangalore, India, founded in the memory of Bishop George Edward Lynch Cotton, Bishop of Calcutta. The school has been described as "The Eton of the East". Th ...

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

and after returning to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

worked as a

Lecturer Lecturer is an List of academic ranks, academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. T ...

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

. A

statue A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size; a sculpture t ...

on the

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

beach recognizes him for his contribution to the understanding and promotion of the

Tamil language Tamil (; ' , ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Indian territory of Pudu ...

Biography

George Uglow Pope was born on 24 April 1820 in Bedeque,

Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island (PEI; ) is one of the thirteen Provinces and territories of Canada, provinces and territories of Canada. It is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, but the most densely populated. The island has seve ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. His father was John Pope (1791–1863), of

Padstow Padstow (; kw, Lannwedhenek) is a town, civil parishes in England, civil parish and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England. The town is situated on the west bank of the River Camel estuary approximately northwest of Wadebridge, ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

, a merchant who became a missionary, who emigrated to

in 1818, and Catherine Uglow (1797–1867), of Stratton, north

. The family moved to

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

, St. Vincent's before returning to

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymouth ...

in 1826 where John Pope became a prosperous merchant and ship-owner. George Uglow Pope's and his younger brother

William Burt Pope William Burt Pope (19 February 1822–5 July 1903) was an English Wesleyan Methodist minister and theologian, who was president of the Methodist Conference. Biography Early life William Burt Pope was born at Horton, Nova Scotia, on 19 Feb ...

studied at the Wesleyan schools in Bury and Hoxton and at the age of fourteen George joined missionary service in southern India. He left for

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territo ...

in 1839 and arrived at

Sawyerpuram Sawyerpuram is a town ''panchayat'' in Tuticorin district, Tamil Nadu, India. Microliths are found in large in numbers around Sawyerpuram (and additionally in Kulattur, Tirunelveli). They were found embedded in the fossil-bearing sand dunes. Th ...

near Tuticorin(now Thoothukudi) with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Pope started studying Tamil as a teenager in England and during the voyage to

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and Pope later turned into a

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

and

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...

. In 1841 he was ordained by the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

and he married Mary Carver, daughter of another

Anglican priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...

. Pope worked in the Tirunelveli region where he also interacted with other missionaries like Christian Friedrich Schwartz. In 1845, Mary died at Tuticorin and Pope moved to Madras(now Chennai). He married Henrietta Page, daughter of G. van Someren and they left for England in 1849. During this period he worked with many figures in the Oxford Catholic movement including such as Cardinal

Henry Edward Manning Henry Edward Manning (15 July 1808 – 14 January 1892) was an English prelate of the Catholic church, and the second Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 until his death in 1892. He was ordained in the Church of England as a young man, but con ...

, Archbishop Trench, Bishop

Samuel Wilberforce Samuel Wilberforce, FRS (7 September 1805 – 19 July 1873) was an English bishop in the Church of England, and the third son of William Wilberforce. Known as "Soapy Sam", Wilberforce was one of the greatest public speakers of his day.Natural Hi ...

, Bishop

John Lonsdale John Lonsdale (17 January 1788 – 19 October 1867) was an English clergyman, who was the third Principal of King's College, London, and later served as Bishop of Lichfield. He was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, an ...

, E. B. Pusey, and

John Keble John Keble (25 April 1792 – 29 March 1866) was an English Anglican priest and poet who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Keble College, Oxford, was named after him. Early life Keble was born on 25 April 1792 in Fairford, Glouce ...

. Returning to Tanjore (now Thanjavur) in 1851, teaching at St Peter's School, he found himself in conflict with other missionaries. In 1855, a Tamil priest Vedanayakam Shastri who was a disciple of Schwartz and a poet in the court of Maharaja Serfoji was flogged publicly resulting in a separation of Tamil church free of the Anglican church leading to the resignation of Pope. He founded a seminary at

for training Anglican Tamil clergy but this too ran into trouble and he decided to move to Ootacamund (Ooty) in 1859. Here he founded a grammar school for European children (which ran from 1859 to 1870) which is now home to the Government Arts School and Stonehouse. The grammar school at Stonehouse cottage was opened by the Bishop of Madras on 2 July 1858 with Pope as Principal. The school moved elsewhere as the building was sold to the Trustees of the Lawrence Asylum in March 1859. Stonehouse cottage was then used to house the male asylum inmates and the Grammar school moved to new premises in Lovedale on 1 April 1869. He also founded Holy Trinity Church in

Ooty Ooty (), officially known as Udhagamandalam (also known as Ootacamund (); abbreviated as Udhagai), is a city and a municipality in the Nilgiris district of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located north west of Coimbatore and so ...

. Pope was referred to with respect by the

Tamilians The Tamil people, also known as Tamilar ( ta, தமிழர், Tamiḻar, translit-std=ISO, in the singular or ta, தமிழர்கள், Tamiḻarkaḷ, translit-std=ISO, label=none, in the plural), or simply Tamils (), are a Drav ...

as Pope Aiyar. Pope became famous for his strictness and in 1870 he was made principal of Bishop Cotton Boys' School at

. He was also the first pastor of the All Saints Church at Bangalore. In 1881, Pope left

and settled in Oxford where he made a mark as a

lecturer Lecturer is an List of academic ranks, academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. T ...

in Tamil and Telugu (1884). He received an honorary MA in 1886 and a Gold Medal of the

Royal Asiatic Society The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the en ...

in 1906. He died on 11 February 1908. He delivered his last

sermon A sermon is a religious discourse or oration by a preacher, usually a member of clergy. Sermons address a scriptural, theological, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law, or behavior within both past and present contexts. El ...

on 26 May 1907. Pope was buried at St Sepulchre's Cemetery, located in Jericho, central Oxford, England. After his death, his second wife, Henrietta, and two daughters received pension. Henrietta died on 11 September 1911 and is buried beside Pope. Three of their sons continued to work in India. John Van Someren Pope worked on education in Burma, Arthur William Uglow Pope served as a railway engineer in India and China; while

Lieutenant-Colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

Thomas Henry served in the medical service as a professor of

ophthalmology Ophthalmology ( ) is a surgical subspecialty within medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders. An ophthalmologist is a physician who undergoes subspecialty training in medical and surgical eye care. Following a medic ...

at the

Madras Medical College Madras Medical College (MMC) is a public medical college located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Established on 2 February 1835, it is the second oldest medical college in India, established after Calcutta Medical College. History The Governm ...

Contributions to Tamil studies

Pope was along with Joseph Constantius Beschi,

Francis Whyte Ellis Francis Whyte Ellis (1777–1819) was a British civil servant in the Madras Presidency and a scholar of Tamil and Sanskrit. Biography Ellis became a writer in the East India Company's service at Madras in 1796. He was promoted to the offices o ...

, and Bishop Robert Caldwell one of the major scholars on Tamil. His first work was ''A Catechism of Tamil Grammar'' (1842). His most famous work is the translation of the ''

'' which he completed on 1 September 1886. His ''Sacred Kural'' contains introduction,

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

translation Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

, notes,

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

and

concordance Concordance may refer to: * Agreement (linguistics), a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase * Bible concordance, an alphabetical listing of terms in the Bible * Concordant coastline, in geology, where beds, or la ...

. It also includes the

translation of F. W. Ellis and the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

Translation of

Constanzo Beschi Constantine Joseph Beschi (8 November 1680 – 4 February 1747), also known under his Tamil name of ''Vīramāmunivar'', was an Italian Jesuit priest, missionary in South India, and Tamil language littérateur. Early years Born in Castiglione ...

with 436 pages. He had, by February 1893, translated '' Naaladiyaar'', a didactic work of moral sayings in quatrains, 400 in number in 40 chapters, each by a Jain ascetic, according to a Tamil tradition. His magnum opus, the translation of ''Tiruvachakam'' appeared in 1900. Of this he said: "I date this on my eightieth birthday. I find, by reference, that my first Tamil lesson was in 1837. This ends, as I suppose a long life of devotion to Tamil studies. It is not without deep emotion that I thus bring to a close my life's literary work". He dedication this last work to

Benjamin Jowett Benjamin Jowett (, modern variant ; 15 April 1817 – 1 October 1893) was an English tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian, an Anglican cleric, and a translator of Plato and Thucydides. He was Master of B ...

who had been a friend while serving as chaplain at Balliol College (1888). *'' First lessons in Tamil: or a full introduction to the common dialect of that language, on the plan of Ollendorf and Arnold'', Madras, 1856 (1st edition) - the next edition was published as: *'' A Tamil hand-book: or full introduction to the common dialect of that language on the plan of Ollendorf and Arnold'', Madras, 1859 (2nd edition), 1867 (3rd edition) *''A handbook of the ordinary dialect of the Tamil language'', London, 1883 (4th edition, 3 volumes - Part 4-dictionary), Oxford 1904 ( 7th edition) *''A larger grammar of the Tamil language in both its dialects]'', Madras, 1858 *'' iarchive:b30093910, Pope's second catechism of Tamil grammar'', 1858 *'' A text-book of Indian history; with geographical notes, genealogical tables, examination questions, and chronological, biographical, geographical, and general indexes'', London, 1871 (1st edition), 1880 (3rd edition) * திருவள்ளுவர் அருளிச்செய்த திருக்குறள் (''Tiruvalluvar arulicceyta Tirrukkural''). ''The 'Sacred' Kurral of Tiruvalluva-Nayanar'', London, 1886 * முனிவர் அருளிச்செய்த நாலடியார் (''The Naladiyar, or, Four hundred quatrains in Tamil''), Oxford, 1893 *'' St. John in the Desert: an introduction and notes to Browning's 'a death in the desert''', Oxford, 1897 *'' The Tiruvacagam; or, 'Sacred utterances' of the Tamil poet, saint, and sage Manikka-Vacagar: the Tamil text of the fifty-one poems, with English translation'', Oxford, 1900 *'' A catalogue of the Tamil books in the library of the British Museum, London'', 1909 (with L. D. Barnett)

Criticism

Pope has occasionally been criticised for over-emphasising certain texts from ancient Tamil literature while downplaying, or even dismissing, others, both ancient and more recent (which is something that many Tamil scholars tended to do in the late nineteenth century).

Rajiv Malhotra Rajiv Malhotra (born 15 September 1950) is an Indian-born American Hindutva ideologue, author and founder of Infinity Foundation, which focuses on Indic studies, and also funds projects such as Columbia University's project to translate the ...

has been highly critical of the work of Pope. In Malhotra's book

Breaking India ''Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines'' (Amaryllis, 2011) is a book written by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan which argues that India's integrity is being undermined by the support of western insti ...

, he writes in detail of Pope's attempts to undermine Tamil spirituality. He writes of Pope's claims that all Tamil works are of Christian origin, and that

Tamil culture Tamil culture is the culture of the Tamil people. Tamil culture is rooted in the arts and ways of life of Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, and across the globe. Tamil culture is expressed in language, literature, music, dance, the ...

has nothing to do with

Indian culture Indian culture is the heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies that originated in or are associated with the ethno-linguistically diverse India. The term al ...

, thereby forging a Dravidian identity that previously never existed.

References

External links

St Peter's School Thanjavur
* ttp://anglicanhistory.org/india/pope_aggression1853/ The Lutheran Aggression: A Letter to the Tranquebar Missionaries by G.U. Pope (1853)
Resident Rendezvoyeur: A natural state of grace by Aliyeh Rizvi
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pope, George Uglow 1820 births 1908 deaths Anglican missionaries in India Dravidologists Tamil scholars of non-Tamil background Canadian Anglican missionaries British Anglican missionaries Tamil–English translators Translators of the Tirukkural into English Tirukkural translators 19th-century translators Missionary linguists Burials at St Sepulchre's Cemetery

Biography

Contributions to Tamil studies

Criticism

See also

References

External links