Hugh Nevill
Encyclopedia
Hugh Nevill was a British
civil servant, best known for his scholarship and studies of the culture of Sri Lanka
.
, but died soon after.
, archaeology
, botany
, ethnology
, folklore
, geography
, geology
, history
, mythology
, palaeography
, philology
, and zoology
.
, Tamil
, and Pali
, now kept at the British Library
. He produced a critical catalog of the collection, in two volumes, but died before it was published. A more detailed description, in seven volumes, was eventually prepared by K. D. Somadasa and published by the Library.
One of these manuscripts is the Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole Manuscript
, the earliest text of significant length in the Indo-Portuguese
creole
spoken by the Burghers
and Kaffirs
communities of Sri Lanka.
Many objects collected by Nevill in Sri Lanka were acquired by the British Museum
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
civil servant, best known for his scholarship and studies of the culture of Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
.
Biography
Nevill went to Sri Lanka in 1865, as a Private Secretary to the Chief Justice. From 1869 to 1897 he followed a career in the British Civil Service, which led to his appointment as District Judge of Batticaloa. In 1897 he sailed for FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, but died soon after.
Scholarly contributions
Nevill was a pioneer student of the origin and development of Sinhala, the main language of Sri Lanka, and of the dialects of the Veddhas, Rodiyas, and Vanniyas. He was the founder and a major contributor of the scholarly journal The Taprobanian, and of the Kandyan Society of Arts. His interests and publications were extremely broad, covering anthropologyAnthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
, ethnology
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
, folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
, palaeography
Palaeography
Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...
, philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, and zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
.
The Hugh Nevill Collection
During his 32 years in Sri Lanka, Nevill assembled a collection of 2,227 prose and verse manuscripts, mostly in Sinhala, MalayalamMalayalam language
Malayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people...
, Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
, and Pali
Pali language
Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is best known as the language of many of the earliest extant Buddhist scriptures, as collected in the Pāi Canon or Tipitaka, and as the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism.-Etymology of the name:The word Pali itself...
, now kept at the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
. He produced a critical catalog of the collection, in two volumes, but died before it was published. A more detailed description, in seven volumes, was eventually prepared by K. D. Somadasa and published by the Library.
One of these manuscripts is the Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole Manuscript
Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole Manuscript
The Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole Manuscript is a significant record of the Indo-Portuguese creole, as spoken in the 19th century among the Burgher and Kaffir communities...
, the earliest text of significant length in the Indo-Portuguese
Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese language
Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese,Ceylonese Portuguese Creole or Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole is a language spoken in Sri Lanka. While the predominant languages of the island are Sinhala and Tamil, the interaction of the Portuguese and the Sri Lankans led to the evolution of a new language, Sri Lanka...
creole
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
spoken by the Burghers
Burgher people
The Burghers are a Eurasian ethnic group, historically from Sri Lanka, consisting for the most part of male-line descendants of European colonists from the 16th to 20th centuries and local women, with some minorities of Swedish, Norwegian, French and Irish.Today the mother tongue of the Burghers...
and Kaffirs
Sri Lanka Kaffir people
The Sri Lankan Kaffirs are an ethnic group in Sri Lanka who are partially descended from 16th century Portuguese traders and the African slaves who were brought by them to work as labourers and soldiers to fight against the Sri Lankan kings...
communities of Sri Lanka.
Many objects collected by Nevill in Sri Lanka were acquired by the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
.
Books
- K. D. Somadasa, catalogue of the Hugh Nevill Collection (7 vol.). British Library Press, and Pali Text SocietyPali Text SocietyThe Pali Text Society was founded in 1881 by T.W. Rhys Davids "to foster and promote the study of Pali texts".Pali is the language in which the texts of the Theravada school of Buddhism is preserved...
. - Hugh Nevill, Sinhala Kavi ("Sinhalese Verse"). Edited by P. E. P. Deraniyagala.