C P Brown: Bishop Caldwell on CPB

24. Bishop Caldwell on CPB


BISHOP CALDWELL and CPB travelled together in ‘Mary ANN’, to India, in 1837. Caldwell was highly educated, and was travelling for the first time. CPB was returning after his forced furlough. Initially, Caldwell looked up to CPB with some veneration, which vanished as time went by. Verbatim extracts of Caldwell’s study of CPB’s personality, contained in ‘the literary autobiography’ by Bangorey are given below:

QUOTE
“The amount of Sanskrit I learnt {from CPB} was not much”
“His judgement always could not be relied up on”
“Their father was educating them… to be filled to… ministry in India but none of them entered the church…”
“Both pedantic and eccentric he is beyond doubt”
“It he had been educated in the company of real learning…. His love of display would have been checked”
“Would have been cut down to an agreeable companionship and a useful member of society”
“Being chiefly among those whom he could lord it like a “Triton among the minnows”
“Mental character swelled … weeds of pedantry, … education improperly conducted…”
“There he is, tying his ear to no tongue but to his own”
“I was often talked dead”
“The result of a desire to strike and shine”
“Quotations from classics very often they were not applicable at all…”
“He had not made a better selection… for he neglected the valuable and chosen the worthless; to have thrown away the kernel and treasure up the shell”
“For instance he has read little of the Greek tragedians and historians but only anthologies”
“In Latin only a few books of Livin and Tacitus…”
“In English History he knows little”
“His knowledge of HINDOOISM and classical Sanskrit is inferior to that of many…”
“That young man has a large appetite for learning but small digestion”
“For his learning seems to be an ocean of remembrances, on the surface of which he floats up and down, like a ship without a rudder; a mighty tumulus of gold, silver and precious, stones, wood, hay and stubble, under which judgement lies buried; a caput. Mortnum of quotations: an encyclopaedia of useless knowledge and books that nobody ever read; an antiquarian’s catalogue.”

3. “Those opinions about Indian meanness, character, religion…I can scarce venture to trust him as he changed hands… his statements are all chameleons”.

“One result of this desire to shine is pedantry, another is scepticism, and of this morbid intellect, Mr. Brown has his full share. He reaches the undesirable proficiency of.
Those Athenian sceptic owls
Who will not credit their own souls?
But measuring all things by their own
Knowledge, hold nothing to be known.

“Scarcely anything can be uttered however truth-like or reasonable, but having three times shook his head to stir his wit up, having whined as if in deep anguish, having them uttered a prefatory: “Oh! No!” he launches an assault upon the poor trembling opinion and asserts that it does not deserve to be believed “Oh! No!” Is any meaning attached to any word, in any application, in any classic?”

“He seems to have a sincere, thorough, and well-grounded belief in Christianity as a system, and a very low opinion, I may say a contempt, of Hindooism; not a surprising thing after all when his education is kept in mind; he was once intimate with Buchanan, Martyn, Thomason and the missionaries of Serampore”.

“He astonishes me with the extent of his ideological reading and truth like aspect of his views on the spread of Christianity in India - on the obstacles to be encountered and the means to be used, as well as on the likelihood of success in spreading it”.

“I have never met his parallel for thoughtlessness, snappish dogmatism, credulity, and inability to string three sentences together logically. In these respects "none but himself can be his parallel”.

“If I have any chance at all of being talked to death, it is neither by infidels nor by radicals but by my restless Pundit, Mr. Brown”.

In spite of this devastating study of the person, our Andhra Historians of Rao, Bangorey and JHS write glorifying some of the phrases Let me put together of Caldwell, “Quotations which were not applicable, read only Greek anthologies, he knows little English History, encyclopaedia of useless knowledge, low opinion, contempt of Hindoism, thoughtlessness, inability to string three sentences together” this specimen of a CPB!!