Background
James Prinsep was born on the 20th of August 1799. He was the seventh son and the tenth child of John Prinsep (1746–1830) and his wife, Sophia Elizabeth Auriol (1760–1850).
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antiquary Orientalist scholars
James Prinsep was born on the 20th of August 1799. He was the seventh son and the tenth child of John Prinsep (1746–1830) and his wife, Sophia Elizabeth Auriol (1760–1850).
Prinsep found a position as an assay master at the Calcutta mint and reached Calcutta along with his brother Henry Thoby on 15 September 1819. Within a year at Calcutta, he was sent by his superior, the eminent orientalist Horace Hayman Wilson, to work as assay master at the Benares mint. He stayed at Benares until the closure of that mint in 1830. He then moved back to Calcutta as deputy assay master and when Wilson resigned in 1832, he was made assay master at the new silver mint designed in Greek revival style by Major W. N. Forbes.
His work as assay master led him to conduct many scientific studies.
He suggested the possibility of visual pyrometric measurement using a calibrated series of mica plates as well as using the thermal expansion of platinum but considered that a practical approach was to use calibrated combinations of platinum, gold and silver alloys placed in a cupel or crucible and observe their melting. He also described a pyrometer that measured the expansion of a small amount of air held within a gold bulb. In 1833 he called for reforms to Indian weights and measures and advocated a uniform coinage based on the new silver rupee of the East India Company. He also devised a balance so delicate as to measure three-thousandth of a grain (≈0. 19 mg).
Talented artist and draftsman, Prinsep made meticulous sketches of ancient monuments, astronomy, instruments, fossils and other subjects. He conducted experiments on practical methods to prevent rusting of iron surfaces.
James Prinsep took an interest in architecture at Benares. He studied and illustrated temple architecture, designed the new mint building at Benares as well as a church.
In 1822 he conducted a survey of Benares and produced an accurate map at the scale of 8 inches to a mile. This map was lithographed in England. He also painted a series of watercolours of monuments and festivities in Benares which were sent to London in 1829 and published between 1830 and 1834 as Benares Illustrated, in a Series of Drawings.
He helped design an arched tunnel to drain stagnant lakes and improve the sanitation of the densely populated areas of Benares and built a stone bridge over the Karamansa river. He helped restore the minarets of Aurangzeb which were in a state of collapse. When he moved to Calcutta, he offered to help complete a canal that had been planned by his brother Thomas but left incomplete by the latter's death in 1830. Thomas's canal linked the River Hooghly with branches of the Ganges further to the east.
Prinsep is the first European scholar to decipher the edicts of the ancient Indian emperor Ashoka. He developed the study of the largest collection of Indian coins then existing, assumed responsibility for architectural projects, chiefly at Benares. He introduced a uniform coinage and reformed the Indian system of weights and measures.
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In 1828 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Apart from architectural work (chiefly at Benares), his leisure was devoted to Indian inscriptions and numismatics, and he is remembered as the first to decipher and translate the rock edicts of Asoka.
He was also very interested in understanding weather. He maintained meteorological registers, apart from supplying barometers to volunteers and graphically summarising the records of others. He worked on the calibration of instruments to measure humidity and atmospheric pressure.
He married Harriet Sophia Aubert, elder daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Jeremiah Aubert of the Bengal army and his wife Hannah, at the cathedral in Calcutta on 25 April 1835. They had a daughter Eliza in 1837 who was to be the only child to survive.
