Aloys Sprenger

Abstract

Aloys Sprenger (1813–1893) was an Austrian scholar with a medical degree who joined the British East India Company’s medical service in order to pursue in India his real passion, the study of oriental literatures. He became the Principal of Delhi College in 1845, and presided over an experiment in learning at Delhi College, an institution that taught both eastern and western literatures and sciences through the medium of Urdu. The college attempted to bring about a creative synthesis of the two curricula, via an active programme of translation and publication. Sprenger helped launch a series of scholarly journals published by the college, thus contributing to the dissemination of knowledge and the nurturing of a group of students and faculty with whom he maintained an active correspondence after leaving the college. This collection of letters has not been adequately evaluated earlier as an indication of the collaboration between western and Indian intellectuals in the period before the revolt of 1857. Most accounts of Sprenger’s contributions to Delhi College have been laudatory. There was, however, a darker side to Sprenger’s stewardship that deserves elucidation. Based on archival research, the present article seeks to evaluate Sprenger’s ambiguous intellectual legacy to Delhi College and to the evolution of education in British India.1