Indian Antiquary Vol 60

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

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He was Chairman of the Standing Committee of Baronetage for 15 years. He presided over the Anthropological Section of the British Association in 1913, when he delivered an address on the Administrative Value of Anthropology, a subject in which he took special interest, and the importance of which he had emphasized on previous occasions. In 1928 he was chosen to preside over the Jubilee Congress of the Folklore Society, when his presidential address on The Mystery and the Mental Atmosphere revealed the remarkable depth of his study of Eastern hagiolatry.
Reference has already been made to the energy with which he took a share in the public work of his own county, but special mention must be made of the unremitting service he rendered in connexion with the Territorial Army Association, of which he was Chairman from 1908 to 1921, and the St. John Ambulance Association, of which he was created Bailiff, Grand Cross in 1927. During the Great War he worked very hard as a member of the Joint War Committee of the latter association and the British Red Cross. For his services in these respeots he was decorated with the C.B. in 1916. He was the moving spirit in the Edith Cavell Homes of Rest for Nurses, and for many years on the Council of the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies, in the building of which he was largely instrumental. Approaching, as he then was, the allotted span of three score years and ten, however, the strain of overwork during this period told heavily upon his naturally strong constitution, already impaired by long residence in trying eastern climates, and caused & breakdown. His eyesight became seriously affected, and other ailments associated often with old age supervened, compelling him eventually to live most of his time abroad and come to England on short visits in the summer. Montreux, Wiesbaden and Territet were tried in turn. For the last two years he lived at Territet, by the shore of Lake Geneva. Here, though forbidden at intervals by his doctors to do any work for some weeks at a time, he managed to get through an extraordinary volume of work on the whole, completing his New Light on the Mysterious Tragedy of the Worcester, published at the end of last year, and almost finishing an annotated edition of the second volume of The Life of John Olafsson for the Hakluyt Society. In the intervals of leisure from these works he was occupied with the classification and arrangement of the voluminous material collected by him during thirty years on the Indian Muslim Saints, for the preparation of what he himself regarded as destined to be his magnum opus. In view of the difficulty of publishing the work as a whole, he had decided to divide the matter into a series of five monographs, the first of which was actually ready in type.
In the autumn of last year his condition became such as to give cause for grave anxiety; but his wonderful recuperative power gave hope that he would pull through, as he had done before, and recover his strength with the advent of the spring. Full of pluck and faith, he was never despondent. His letters were always cheery. He frequently complained however of the severity of the weather, which precluded him from getting out into the sunshine and confined him to his room. When the end was at hand he was not even feeling ill: death came to him quite suddenly, caused by a clot on the brain, while he was working with his papers actually in his hand.
To the Indian Antiquary, with which he was associated for fifty-two years, and which owes its continuance since 1885 to his enterprise and devotion, his loss is irreparablo. Dr. James Burgess, who founded the Journal at his own risk in 1872, had by his own abilities and by enlisting the co-operation of a band of great scholars, like G. Bühler, J. F. Fleet, F. Kielhorn and (Sir) Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, established it successfully as the premier research journal in India. It was during the editorship of Burgess that in 1879 (then) Lieut. R. O. Temple made his first contribution to the Journal in the shape of a "Note on the Mengala Thok" (vol. VIII,