George Hadley (orientalist)
George Hadley (died 1798) was an English army officer of the East India Company, now known as an orientalist for his early work on Hindustani.
Life
[edit]Hadley was appointed a cadet in the East India Company's service in 1763, and gained his first commission in the Bengal Presidency on 19 June of that year. He became lieutenant on 5 February 1764, and captain on 26 July 1760.[1]
Hadley retired from the service on 4 December 1771.[1] He returned to England, though it is not known exactly when.[2] He was of assistance to the self-taught orientalist William Price, whom he introduced to William Ouseley.[3]
Hadley died on 10 September 1798 in Gloucester Street, Queen Square, London.[1]
Works
[edit]As an army commander, Hadley was in charge of a company of sepoys, but initially had no knowledge of their language, Hindustani, which was then colloquially known in English as "Moors". For his own use, Hadley wrote a grammar of it, in 1765. A copy of his manuscript was published in London in 1770. Hadley then worked on a corrected edition, which appeared as Grammatical Remarks (1772).[4] He published also Introductory Grammatical Remarks on the Persian Language. With a Vocabulary, English and Persian, Bath, 1776.[1]
Hadley's grammar was aimed at the current British needs in Bengal, to get Indians to work for them, without the mediation of a munshi. Its content, as a phrase book, reflected the economy and social climate of the time, and ignored the Urdu language.[5] Hadley correctly identified Hindustani as a language in its own right, rather than a dialect of Persian. His theory of a Tartar origin was rejected, and his work came in for criticism from John Borthwick Gilchrist, who objected to the version of Hindustani it reported.[2]
In 1788 Thomas Briggs, a printer in Hull, persuaded Hadley to put his name to a compilation, A New and Complete History of the Town and County of the Town of Kingston-upon-Hull.[1]
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b c d e Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1890). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 23. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ a b Prior, Katherine. "Hadley, George". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11859. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ Loloi, Parvin. "Price, William". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22774. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ Grammatical Remarks on the practical and vulgar Dialect of the Indostan Language commonly called Moors. With a Vocabulary, English and Moors, London, 1772; 4th edit., enlarged, 1796.
- ^ Bayly, Christopher Alan (9 March 2000). Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870. Cambridge University Press. p. 288. ISBN 978-0-521-66360-1.
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1890). "Hadley, George (d.1798)". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 23. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
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