Indian Antiquary Vol 53

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 27

FEBRUARY, 19241
DR. WILLIAM CROOKE
DR. WILLIAM CROOKE, C.I.E., D.S.C., LITT.D., F.B.A.
BY SIR R. O TEMPLE, BT. On the 25th October 1923 death somewhat suddenly took another searcher of longstanding and great distinction into Things Indian, as he would have put it himself, for to my knowledge it is quite forty years since Dr. Crooke began to publish his very long series of books and papers on his researches into many kinds of matters connected with the people of India. During all that period he has been more or less continuously connected with myself, and I feel his death therefore as a grievous personal loss.
He was the eldest son of Warren Crooke, M.D., of Macroom Co., Cork, and was born in 1848. being 75 at his death. He belonged to an old Irish family, his younger brother being Col. Sir Warren Crooke-Lawless, C.B., C.B.E., R.A.M.C., of the Coldstream Guards, and Surgeon to Lord Minto, while Viceroy of India, and House-Governor of the Convalescent Home for Officers at Osborne, Isle of Wight. William Crooke was educated at Tipperary Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin, of which last he was a scholar. He entered the Indian Civil Servioe in 1871, and became Collector and Magistrate at various times of the distriots of Saharanpur, Gorakhpur and Mirzapur in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. He retired after an uneventful though strenuous official life in 1895. He was, however, not altogether a literary man, for he was a good sportsman and had shot many tigers during his career.
During his service in India and after it, Crooke was a valuable and prolific writer on oriental matters and took a great interest in all subjects connected with the people of India, their habits and customs, thoir religion and ethics and their ways, and was indeed a master-teacher in such things. He was always willing to help research in these directions in any way open to him and he loved it for its own sake. But he was in no way pushing and reaped but little ronown or recognition and what of them came his way came late in life. He became an Hon. D.Sc. of Oxford (1919) and an Hon. Litt. D. of Dublin (1920). In 1919 also he was awarded the C.I.E. by the Indian Government, and in 1923 he became a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1910 he was President of the Anthropological Scotion (H) of the British Association and in 1911-12 of the Folklore Society, and for years was an active and valued member of the Anthropological Instituto.
The earliest publications of his that I can trace are two notes in this Journal in Vol. XVII (1882) which show the trend of his mind, for they were about the exorcism of village ghosts and the Brahmani duck, and thereafter he constantly helped me up to Vol. XLI (1912). Indeed at one time it was proposed that he should be a Joint Editor with me. He was also a valued contributor from 1883 to the Journal I started, in the Punjab Notes and Queries, and succeeded me as Editor for a few years, when it was converted into North Indian Notes and Queries. Crooke was always ready to help periodical and similar publications from his almost unrivalled knowledge of Indian Ethnology, Anthropology and Folklore, and was & constant contributor for many years to the publications of the Anthropological Institute and of the Folklore Society. He had in fact for some years been Editor of Folklore at the time of his death. He wrote in addition many articles in Nature and in the Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics for Dr. Hastings.
Crooke was also an indefatigable editor of books, producing with great learning and wide reading valuable editions of Yule's Anglo-Indian Glossary, usually known as Hobson-Jobson (1903), Fryer's New Account of East India and Persia in three volumes for the Hakluyt Society (1909 and onwards), Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali's Observations on the Mussulmans of India (1916), Tod's Annals of Rajasthan (1920), Herklot's Quanún-i-Islam (Islam in India, 1922). In