Solomon Caesar Malan
Solomon Caesar Malan D.D., Vicar of Broadwindsor, Prebendary of Sarum, was a Geneva-born Anglican divine, a polyglot and orientalist. He published around 50 works related to biblical studies and translations.
Malan's Original Notes on the Book of Proverbs is now considered significant for his critical insights. Near the end of his life he gave to notable institutions, including a set of Tibetan sutras to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and most of his personal library to the Indian Institute in Oxford. It became the Malan Library, and after its dispersal in the 1960s, was recognized as foundational for the Oriental Division in the Bodleian Libraries.
Early life in Geneva
By birth a Genevan descended from an exiled French family, Malan was born as César Jean Salomon Malan in Geneva. He was the first of a dozen children born to his gifted father, Dr. Henri Abraham César Malan and his Swiss wife, Salomé Georgette Jeanne Schönberger. She is rarely mentioned in any of the published writings related to Solomon Caesar Malan's life. His father was a counter-cultural theological teacher in the final years of Genevan city-state history and became a controversial Swiss religious leader, whose evangelical version of Protestant faith challenged the rationalized Enlightenment Calvinism that had become dominant in the first years of 19th century Geneva. Ultimately rejected by the Genevan Calvinist hierarchy as a minister in their community in 1818, the father Malan set up his own church community on his own property, offering a vital Christian alternative in worship to what was offered in the state church. Writing hymns in French that became famous for their theological vitality, and publishing numerous short stories and some larger works as a Swiss evangelical intellectual, the father Malan became known as an evangelical international missionary in various European countries, as well as in Great Britain, particularly within Scotland. His honorary doctorate was given by the University of Glasgow, indicating the level of respect he had attained outside of Switzerland.This situation of social alienation and counter-cultural religious assertiveness profoundly shaped the early years and educational training of the first son, César Jean Salomon. The education his first son received was essentially a home education, in which César Jean Salomon thrived. Under his father's guidance, he initially learned Latin, French, German and Italian. According to his son's biography, at the age of 18 César Jean Salomon Malan had already made progress in Sanskrit, Arabic and Hebrew. In addition, however, he also was trained by his father in a wide variety of fine and technical arts. His lessons in sketching and watercolours were taught by a private tutor and bore extensive fruitfulness in much-appreciated sketches and paintings in his later years. During these formative years, César Jean Salomon also was taught botany, and because of his father's gift of a rather sophisticated workshop for his bright son, he learned skills in carpentry, bookbinding, and printing. As revealed later in his life, his bookbinding skills were aesthetically impressive. Also, the mature son Malan knew enough music theory and how to play some musical instruments to employ them in his ministry. Probably during this early period of his life, he had also begun to study calligraphy, an art in which he later excelled in numerous styles and languages. Because of his father's growing international reputation as an evangelical theologian, there were a number of international guests who visited their Swiss Genevan home, and in that context, the eldest son met the first love of his life, the daughter of an English evangelical Anglican, Mary Marsh Mortlock. Though his father had hoped that the first son would follow him in his distinctive ministry in Geneva as what could be seen as a Free Church or Dissenter Christian community, César Jean Salomon chose another route that led him to leave Switzerland and his father's work.
To Great Britain and formal education in Oxford
From his earliest youth, he manifested a remarkable faculty for the study of languages, but it was the romantic relationship he developed with Mary Mortlock that would reshape his destiny, move him to leave his father's home, and adopt the English name, Solomon Caesar Malan. After some difficult questions emerged regarding the romantic relationship between César Jean Salomon Malan and Mary Morlock, an agreement between the two fathers was reached, that included a way for the son Malan to attain a solid grasp of English, obtain a formal education, and marry. Mary's father agreed to support the young Malan's education if he could successfully matriculate into a college in Oxford. In order to do so, they agreed that he should serve as a family tutor in Great Britain for a period, so that he could become capable in English to sit for the university entrance examinations. If he succeeded in these matters, then it was also agreed that César and Mary could marry. What was an additional religious problem involved in these arrangements is that colleges in Oxford required that a person who graduated would agree with the principles of the Anglican faith, including its support for the English royal family, a principle that was opposed by Malan's father. Nevertheless, once the arrangements were settled, a new set of challenges and opportunities opened up for the life of the son who would subsequently be known as Solomon Caesar Malan.As a consequence, when the young Malan was twenty years old, an arrangement was made for him in 1832 to travel to Scotland and serve as a tutor in the marquis of Tweeddale's family. The university examinations occurred the following year, but the young Malan was still self-consciously lacking confidence in the quality of his English. Hoping to overcome that difficulty, he petitioned the examiners to allow him to do his paperwork during the examination in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin or Greek, rather than in English. Though his request was not granted, the young Swiss scholar managed to pass. Consequently, in 1833 he matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. A year later in 1834, Solomon and Mary were married, and the relatively young Swiss student began to thrive in his studies. Unquestionably, the young Malan took up his opportunity to study in Oxford with a vigour and intensity driven by both an insatiable desire to learn all that he could and to please those who had agreed to support him and his wife. Unfortunately, this led to his losing sight in his left eye during those years, a threat to his gifted scholarly intentions, but one that did not ultimately obstruct either his personal motivation to learn or his intense self-imposed disciplines. In fact, during his years of study in Oxford, he earned two major scholarships: the Boden scholarship for Sanskrit in 1834, and the Pusey and Ellerton scholarship for Hebrew in 1837. Obviously, this indicates something about his level of scholarly attainment in those two classical languages. When he graduated in 1837, it was not with extraordinary honours, but he did achieve a 2nd class in Literae humaniores.
Unknown to many others at the time, Solomon Caesar Malan took it upon himself as a newcomer to Oxford to become an expert in proverbial literature. Using the Hebrew biblical text of the proverbs, which are mostly attributed to his namesake, King Solomon, as the basis for this personal research project, Malan took this task also as an act of devotion to the biblical text that he, his father, and his wife all considered to be divine revelation. As the inside flyleaf to the manuscript version of his Original Notes on the Book of Proverbs reveals, he began the multilingual recordings of parallel or antagonistic proverbs in 1833, the year he initiated his university studies in Oxford. For just over sixty years he devoted himself to this study, ultimately donating the huge manuscript that he had produced at the end of his life to the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1894, just a few months before his death. Originally pursued
as a matter of interest in comparative wisdom literature and an enrichment of his own biblical convictions, and so never meant to be published, later in his life others urged him to consider publishing some account of this unusual intellectual journey. Consequently, during the last decade of his life Malan figured out how he might approach that major effort, and so ended up making it his magnum opus, publishing the results of his six decades of labour in an English translated version in three volumes, a matter that will be discussed in greater detail below. So, even as Solomon and Mary were starting their young family, the young Oxford scholar's interest in biblical studies and proverbial wisdom had begun in earnest while he was studying at St. Edmund Hall.
A missionary-educator in Calcutta
Because the young Malan couple were evangelical in their Protestant faith, and had become oriented to a low-church Anglican expression of Christianity during their residence in Oxford, it became possible for the young Swiss university graduate from Oxford to apply to the Church Missionary Society to take up a position as a missionary-educator. Though this was an extraordinary request from a 25-year-old foreign student in 1837, the need for qualified missionary educators in India, where he applied, was profound, and so arrangements were made so that his application could be accepted. By early 1838 the Malan family was on a ship headed to India, arriving in May 1838, so that he could take up the position of Professor of Classical Languages at Bishop's College, Calcutta. Once they had arrived, Malan began his educational work and a month later was made a deacon of the Anglican church, and so could be formally recognized in his position at Bishop's College as an Anglican church leader. A young faculty member eager to serve, and to throw himself into his work with an intensity that had previously cost him the sight in his left eye, Malan added to his duties as a lecturer also his musical talents on organ, the responsibilities of leading chapel, and was also made the Secretary to the Bengal Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Notably, by November 1838 he and his family were suffering physically from illnesses, and Malan himself was once again troubled with visual problems that greatly hindered his work. Ultimatelyhe and his family were required by a physician to depart for a milder climate in order to recuperate. Joining his wife and three sons on their voyage to South Africa in early 1839, Malan agreed for Mary and their sons to travel back to Great Britain while he returned to Calcutta. Enduring work back in Bishop's College from November 1839 till April 1840, Malan was once again forced to leave Calcutta because of his deteriorating health. Later in 1840, while recuperating in South Africa, Malan learned that Mary had died after returning to Great Britain.
This traumatic context of Malan's short-lived tenure as a missionary educator in Calcutta should not be understated or overlooked, because his acquisition of living and ancient "eastern languages" began in earnest during this period. From a younger Chinese student, whose name in Cantonese was Ho Tsun-sheen, and who attended Bishop's College at that time as the only person of Chinese ethnicity there, Malan learned the rudiments and grammar of ancient and contemporary Chinese writing. Additionally, from the rather shy and reclusive librarian assistant at the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta, a Hungarian named Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, he not only learned foundational knowledge of both Tibetan language and Tibetan Buddhism, but also was given a cache of nearly forty Tibetan manuscripts Csoma de Kőrös had collected from his interactions with Tibetan monks in the area of Ladahk. Subsequently, Malan would demonstrate his competence in reading texts in Chinese and Tibetan that stemmed from these initial personal encounters with those who could teach him those languages. In addition, Malan managed to learn and continue to collect and study texts written in Indian sub-continental languages from this period, so that within his own personal library he had collected books and manuscripts from thirteen Indian languages. One might say that Malan's relatively brief experiences in India ignited his appetite for foreign language learning in ways that would have been impossible otherwise.