Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/120

 Mission School. In 1838 the arrival of John Murray Mitchell, a student of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and the return of the missionary Robert Nesbit (d. 1855), rendered it possible to organise the school on a more extended basis, and it became known as the General Assembly's Institution. A new building was completed in 1843, but Wilson was immediately afterwards obliged to relinquish it on quitting the church of Scotland at the time of the disruption. He carried on his school in another building which was finished in 1855. The present ‘Wilson College’ was completed about 1887.

Wilson did not, however, confine his efforts to the native youth. He entered into public discussions with the Hindu Bráhmans, and with the Muhammadans and Parsís. His courtesy and knowledge of oriental literature made no less impression than his logic, and by familiarising the native mind with Christian modes of thought he prepared the way for further progress. In 1837, however, a dispute arose which threatened serious consequences. Some of the Parsí pupils at the institution having shown an intention of becoming Christians, one of them was carried off by his friends, while two others evaded capture by taking refuge in Wilson's house. After various violent attempts a writ of habeas corpus was taken out for one of them, and on 6 May 1839 he appeared in court and declared his intention to remain with Wilson. The consequence of these proceedings was the removal of all but fifty out of 284 pupils at the institution, and it was some years before the former numbers were regained.

In the meantime Wilson sought to spread the influence of the mission beyond Bombay by tours through various parts of the country. In 1831, with Charles Pinhorn Farrar, the father of Dean Farrar, he proceeded to Násik on the Godávari, through Poona and Ahmadnagar. In the following year he went eastward to Jálna and the caves of Ellora in Haidarábád, and in the cold season of 1833–4 he visited the south Maráthá country and the Portuguese settlement at Goa. In 1835 he journeyed through Surat, Baroda, and Káthiáwár; and between 1836 and 1842 he visited the Gairsoppa Falls and Rájputána, besides returning to Káthiáwár and Somnáth. These frequent expeditions were used by Wilson as opportunities for spreading religious teaching, while at the same time he collected oriental manuscripts, and by constant intercourse with the natives increased his stock of oriental knowledge, in which he was acquiring a European reputation. He was elected a member of the Bombay Literary Society in 1830, and became president in 1835. On 18 June 1836 he was elected a member of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was the first to partially decipher the rock inscriptions of Asoka at Girnar, which had so long remained an enigma to western savants, and on 7 March 1838 James Prinsep [q. v.] made a full acknowledgment of his services to the Royal Asiatic Society. From 1836 onward he was frequently consulted by the supreme court and by the executive government on questions of Parsí law and custom. In 1843 he published ‘The Parsí Religion unfolded, refuted, and contrasted with Christianity’ (Bombay, 8vo), a work which obtained the favourable notice of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and which on 7 Feb. 1845 procured his election as a fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1843 Wilson was compelled by ill-health to take a furlough, and visited Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, on his way to Scotland. The fruit of his observations was the ‘Lands of the Bible visited and described’ (Edinburgh, 1847, 2 vols. 8vo). He arrived in Edinburgh immediately after the disruption of the church of Scotland, and without hesitation he joined the free church. After addressing the general assembly at Glasgow in October he accompanied Robert Smith Candlish [q. v.] to England, and advocated the cause of Indian missions at Oxford and London. The establishment of the Nágpur mission under Stephen Hislop was largely the result of his insistence of the need of a mission in Central India.

Wilson returned to India in the autumn of 1847, and in 1849 he commenced a tour in Sind, in which he was joined by Alexander Duff in the following year. The conquest of Sind had just been achieved, and Wilson was the first Christian missionary to traverse the country.

From 1848 to 1862 was intellectually the most fruitful period of Wilson's career. About 1848 he was nominated president of the ‘Cave Temple Commission’ appointed by government, chiefly through his instances and those of James Fergusson (1808–1886) [q. v.], to examine and record the antiquities connected with the cave temples of India. To this commission he gave his labour gratuitously for thirteen years, receiving the hearty co-operation of the leading orientalists in India. He published in the ‘Journal of the Bombay Asiatic Society’ (vol. iii.) ‘A Memoir on the Cave Temples and Monasteries, and other Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Jaina Remains of Western India,’ which was reprinted in 1850, and circulated by government to all the district and politi-