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Person · 24/2/1821 – 27/10/1909

Born on 24/2/1821 to Reverend Henry Cockayne Cust, he was educated at Eton College, Trinity College, Cambridge, Haileybury (1840–42) and the College of Fort William, Calcutta, graduating in 1844. He then worked in the Bengal Civil Services for the East India Company, in Hoshiarpur and Ambala (assistant to the magistrate), in India. He was present at the battles of Mudki, Ferozeshah, and Sobraon in 1845–46, where his superior Major George Broadfoot was killed and at the close of the Sikh campaign he was placed in charge of a new province in the Punjab. There he filled in succession every office in the judicial and revenue departments across Punjab, and was rapidly promoted until 1867, when he resigned and returned to England, after having been a member of the Viceroy's Legislative Council and Home Secretary to the Government of India in 1864–65.

Cust returned to England briefly on furlough and returned to work in Benares and Banda. Cust was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn on 13 August 1857. He returned to India and served in Lahore until 1864. He later joined the legislative council and acted as home secretary to the government (1864–65). In 1867 he decided to retire from Indian service.

After retiring to England Cust devoted himself to scientific research, philanthropy, and magisterial and municipal duties, declining reappointments in India. He was a member and officer in many scientific, philanthropic, and religious societies and a prolific writer. He was one of the few Victorian intellectuals to oppose the racist theories popular at the time.

Daniel John Gogerly
Person · 1792-1862

Daniel John Gogerly (1792-1862) was a British Wesleyan Methodist missionary, who served in Sri Lanka from 1818, never returning to England. He was one of the first British translators of the Pāli texts into English, and the greater part of his time was spent in research work in the literature of Ceylon Buddhism. His aim was to accurately portray Buddhism, but he also used his translations to highlight differences between Buddhism and Christianity in furtherance of his missionary agenda. Overall, Gogerly is important not only because his translations were so early but also because the differing factors that conditioned them underscore the complexity within any study of orientalist representations of Buddhism.

After passing several years in general studies, and particularly in earnest preparation for the ministry, he proceeded to Ceylon in 1818, to take charge of the Wesleyan Mission Press at Colombo. From the time of his arrival, he engaged in the study of the vernacular tongues, and was one of the first missionaries who preached extemporaneously in the Sinhalese language. While at Negombo, where he was stationed from 1822 to 1834, he began the study of Pali.

His principal publications consist in essays and translations contributed to the pages of various local periodicals and the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he became in succession secretary, vice-president, and president. These papers are of value to researchers, as records of ancient Pali treatises, of which neither translations nor printed editions existed before Gogerly. His 'Dictionary of the Pali language' could be considered his greatest literary work. He had begun to compile it while at Mathura, and continued adding to it constantly as his reading became more extensive, so that at the time of his death it contained 15,000 words.

Gogerly died at the Wesleyan Mission House, Colpetty, near Colombo, in 1862.