Alexander Dow (1735/6, Perthshire, Scotland – 31 July 1779,

Bhagalpur Bhagalpur is a city in the Indian state of Bihar, situated on the southern banks of the river Ganges. It is the 2nd largest city of Bihar by population and also the headquarters of Bhagalpur district and Bhagalpur division. Known as the Si ...

) was a Scottish Orientalist, writer, playwright and army officer in the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

Life

He was a native of

Crieff Crieff (; gd, Craoibh, meaning "tree") is a Scottish market town in Perth and Kinross on the A85 road between Perth and Crianlarich, and the A822 between Greenloaning and Aberfeldy. The A822 joins the A823 to Dunfermline. Crieff has becom ...

, Perthshire. Alexander Dow's father worked at the Customs at

Dunbar Dunbar () is a town on the North Sea coast in East Lothian in the south-east of Scotland, approximately east of Edinburgh and from the English border north of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Dunbar is a former royal burgh, and gave its name to an ecc ...

. The younger Dow was educated in Dunbar for a time, and, in conjunction with his father's job, this would suggest that he lived in the area for a time. Dow was in the process of being educated for a mercantile career in

Eyemouth Eyemouth ( sco, Heymooth) is a small town and civil parish in Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. It is east of the main north–south A1 road and north of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The town's name comes from its location at the ...

, when he abruptly left aboard the ''King of Prussia'' as a midshipman. The reason for this turn of events is not known, but one reason posited for this was that he was involved in a fatal duel. Dow then worked his way to Bencoolen. There he became secretary to the

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

, and was commended to the patronage of the officials of the

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

. He joined the army there as an ensign in the Bengal infantry on 14 September 1760, and was rapidly promoted lieutenant on 23 August 1763, and captain on 16 April 1764. He returned to Britain on leave in 1768, and published in that year two translations, ''Tales translated from the Persian of Inatulla of Delhi'' and the ''History of Hindostan, translated from the Persian of Ferishta'', from

Firishta Firishta or Ferešte ( fa, ), full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi ( fa, مُحَمَّد قاسِم هِندو شاہ), was a Persian historian, who later settled in India and served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He was ...

. Both works had a great success, and in the following year Dow had a five-act tragedy on Genghis Khan, '' Zingis'', which was acted with some success at Drury Lane. He then returned to India, and was promoted lieutenant-colonel on 25 February 1769, and in 1772 published the continuation of his history of Hindostan to the death of Aurungzeb, with two dissertations, 'On the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan,’ and 'An Enquiry into the State of Bengal.' In 1774 he again returned to England, and David Garrick produced his second tragedy in verse at Drury Lane, entitled 'Sethona', set in a mythic ancient Egypt. It was acted only for nine nights, and was said by David Erskine Baker in his ''Biographia Dramatica'' to be not really by Dow at all. Dow returned once more to India, and died at Bhágalpur on 31 July 1779.

Works

*''Tales Translated from the Persian of Inatulla of Delhi'' (1768) *'' Zingis'' (1769) - 5-act tragedy *'' Sethona'' (1774) - verse tragedy

References

External links

*
Persian Tales of Inatulla of Delhi
in anthology work, Tales of the East: Continuationof the New Arabian nights. Persian tales rom the translation of F. Pétis de la CroixPersian tales of Inatulla of Delhi r. by A. DowOriental tales y A. C. P., comte de CaylusThe history of Nourjahad y Mrs. Frances SheridanAdditional tales from the Arabian nights, J. Ballantyne and company, 1812, at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

Sethona. A Tragedy
at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dow, Alexander 1730s births 1779 deaths Scottish military personnel Scottish orientalists British East India Company Army officers Scottish translators Scottish dramatists and playwrights 18th-century British translators