Malan, Solomon Caesar
MALAN, SOLOMON CAESAR (1812-1894), British divine and orientalist, was by birth a Swiss descended from an exiled French family, and was born at Geneva on the 22nd of April 1812, where his father, Dr Henry Abraham Caesar Malan (1787-1864) enjoyed a great reputation as a Protestant divine. From his earliest youth he manifested a remarkable faculty for the study of languages, and when he came to Scotland as tutor in the marquis of Tweeddale's family at the age of 18 he had already made progress in Sanskrit, Arabic and Hebrew. In 1833 he matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford; and English being almost an unknown tongue to him, he petitioned the examiners to allow him to do his paper work of the examination in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin or Greek, rather than in English. But his request was not granted. After gaining the Boden and the Pusey and Ellerton scholarships, he graduated 2nd class in Lit. hum. in 1837. He then proceeded to India as classical lecturer at Bishop's College, Calcutta, to which post he added the duties of secretary to the Bengal branch of the Royal Asiatic Society; and although compelled by illness to return in 1840, laid the foundation of a knowledge of Tibetan and Chinese. After serving various curacies, he was presented in 1845 to the living of Broadwindsor, Dorset, which he held until 1886. During this entire period he continued to augment his linguistic knowledge, which he carried so far as to be able to preach in that most difficult language, Georgian, on a visit which he paid to Nineveh in 1872. His translations from the Armenian, Georgian and Coptic were numerous. He applied his Chinese learning to the determination of important points connected with Chinese religion, and published a vast number of parallel passages illustrative of the Book of Proverbs. In 1880 the university of Edinburgh conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.D. No modern scholar, perhaps, has so nearly approached the linguistic omniscience of Mezzofanti; but, like Mezzofanti, Dr Malan was more of a linguist than a critic. He made himself conspicuous by the vehemence of his opposition to Westcott and Hort's text of the New Testament, and to the transliteration of Oriental languages, on neither of which points did he in general obtain the suffrages of scholars. His extensive and valuable library, some special collections excepted, was presented by him in his lifetime to the Indian Institute at Oxford. He died at Bournemouth on the 25th of November 1894. His life has been written by his son.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
