Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/350

  ‘A Journal of the British Embassy to Persia, embellished with numerous Views taken in India and Persia; also a Dissertation upon the Antiquities of Persepolis,’ London, 1825, fol. Only one volume was published of this edition, but a second edition contained  ‘Elements of Sanskrit, or an Easy Guide to the Indian Tongues,’ Worcester, 1827, 4to; London, 1832; illustrated by Price's own drawings.  ‘A new Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language, issued under the auspices of the East India Company,’ London, 1828.  ‘Husn oo Dil, or Beauty and Heart: an Allegory,’ Persian and English, translated by Price, London, 1828, 4to; dedicated to the Royal Asiatic Society.  ‘Hindu and Hindoostanee Selections,’ from which copious material was drawn for the ‘Chants populaires de l'Inde’ of M. Garcin de Tassy [Paris, 1860], 8vo.



PRICHARD, RICHARDS, or RHISIART, EVAN (1770–1832), Welsh poet, usually called ‘Ieuan Llayn,’ born in 1770, was son of Richard Thomas Evan of Ty Mawr in the parish of Bryn Croes, Carnarvonshire, and his wife Mari Siarl (Charles). Both his mother and her father, Siarl Marc, were writers of Welsh verse. Evan began life as a schoolmaster at Llan Gian, near his home; he afterwards kept school at Llan Ddeiniolen in the same county. In 1795 his parents emigrated to America, whereupon he became an excise officer, and until 1812 lived chiefly in England. In the latter year he returned to Ty Mawr, then occupied by his uncle, Lewis Siarl, and for the rest of his life conducted a travelling school in the neighbouring parishes. He married his cousin, Mary Robert Thomas, by whom he had three children, and died on 14 Aug. 1832.

Prichard was a versatile writer in all forms of Welsh verse. He wrote much for the periodicals of his time, and edited the ‘Eurgrawn,’ of which some numbers appeared at Carnarvon in 1800. His best known poems are the ‘Ode on Belshazzar's Feast,’ that on the massacre of the bards, and the translation of ‘The Cottar's Saturday Night.’ A collected edition of his verse was published under the title ‘Caniadau Ieuan Lleyn’ at Pwllheli in 1878.



PRICHARD, JAMES COWLES (1786–1848), physician and ethnologist, was born at Ross, Herefordshire, on 11 Feb. 1786. His father was a cultivated man, of great poetical imagination, and both parents were members of the Society of Friends. He was educated at home, learning French, Italian, and Spanish. On his father's removal to Bristol he came into contact with the natives of different countries who visited the port, and thus gained an unusual knowledge of modern Greek and Spanish. In 1802 he became a student of medicine in Bristol, and afterwards at St. Thomas's Hospital. In 1806 he attended classes at Edinburgh, and anthropological investigations soon absorbed much of his attention. He graduated M.D. in Edinburgh in 1808, choosing for the subject of his thesis ‘De Humani Generis Varietate.’ He afterwards resided for a year at Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 1810 Prichard began to practise medicine in Bristol. But he combined with the daily routine of his profession a profound study of ethnology, which bore fruit in 1813 in the publication of his ‘Researches as to the Physical History of Man’ (2nd edit. 2 vols. 1826), an expansion of his Edinburgh thesis. In this volume he contended that the colour of the negro's skin was not the result of the long-continued action of the sun: that our first parents were black, and that the white skin was due to the influence of civilisation. Absorbed as Prichard was in anthropological studies, his practice grew. He freely prescribed blood-letting, and often practised it on himself as a cure for headache, to which he was long subject. In after years he was frequently in request as a consultant by practitioners at a distance. On 11 Aug. 1811 he was elected physician to St. Peter's Hospital, Bristol, and on 29 Feb. 1814 physician to the Bristol Infirmary. He lectured on ‘physiology, pathology, and the practice of physic,’ and wrote articles on purely medical subjects, such as epilepsy and fever. In 1819 he found time to publish ‘An Analysis of Egyptian Mythology,’ in which he traced the early connection between the Hindus and the Egyptians, and made public his hieroglyphic alphabet. Champollion's ‘Précis’ of the latter was not published till 1824. Prichard's deep interest in Egypt led to a friendship between him and the Chevalier Bunsen, to whom he afterwards dedicated his ‘Natural History of Man.’ A German translation of his Egyptian book appeared in 1837.

In 1822 he issued his ‘Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System,’ part i. comprising convulsive and maniacal affections; no more was published. It was based on the experience he had gained during ten years at St.