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In my opinion: 150th death anniversary of James Thomas Molesworth, editor of Marathi-English dictionary first published 1831
Molesworth had begun the dictionary project as an employee of the British East India Company in 1831. His team of seven Shastris and three English scholars collected Marathi words, phrases, idioms, and sayings and translated these into English. His team included twin brothers George and Thomas Candy, and Reverend John Wilson who later founded the Wilson College in Mumbai and became vice-chancellor of the Bombay University
Tarkateertha Lakshmanshastri Joshi, among the greatest Indian linguists, paid rich tributes to James Thomas Molesworth thus: “…both, the Marathi language and Maharashtra, owe him a tremendous debt which they can hardly afford to forget”.
This is how the Tarkateertha concluded his 1975 foreword to the corrected reprint of the Molesworth’s Marathi-English Dictionary published way back in 1857.
Molesworth had begun the dictionary project as an employee of the British East India Company in 1831. His team of seven Shastris and three English scholars collected Marathi words, phrases, idioms, and sayings and translated these into English. His team included twin brothers George and Thomas Candy, and Reverend John Wilson who later founded the Wilson College in Mumbai and became vice-chancellor of the Bombay University.
The team’s work began with a compilation of a simple list of Marathi words for a glossary, for the benefit of British officers and staff of the East India Company.
By 1857, when the dictionary’s second edition was published, it had amassed a huge collection of 60,000 Marathi words with their English translation.
James Molesworth was son of a viscount in England. He did not know a word of Marathi when he reached India at the age 16, for a job.
He started as a lowest commissioned officer in the infantry in 1812 and, in due course, was promoted to higher posts. As per his job requirement, he started studying Marathi, Hindustani, Sanskrit and Persian.
While posted at Solapur around 1818, he along with a colleague, Thomas Candy, started working on a glossary of Marathi words necessary for translations. This led Molesworth to conceive the project of a comprehensive Marathi-English and English-Marathi dictionary.
Bouts of ill health made him move to different places such as Bombay, Pune, Solapur, Dapoli, Mahabaleshwar and Bankot. All of these were small places those days in the 19th century. He struggled and fought all the odds to learn lexicography that was unheard of in the Bombay region then.
Even after the manuscript of the dictionary, was ready, there was the problem of type for the press in Bombay. The type had to be procured from a foundry in faraway Calcutta (Kolkata) for the second edition in 1857. Until 1975, copies were sold gradually, and there was none available in the book depots.
Sharad Gogate of Pune-based Shubhada Saraswat Prakashan says he ventured to reprint the dictionary in 1975.
It was indeed a “heavy” job: 951 pages of a Royal Quarto (9½ inches x 12 2/3 inches), hard bound, weighing about two kilogrammes.
He re-printed it 10 times till the Nirali Publications took over the book business over 20 years ago.
In this era of print-on-demand technology, this dictionary continues to be sold, says Nirali publisher’s Jignesh Furia. But the Molesworth dictionary story does not end here. Computers, internet, the Unicode fonts, and funding agencies have made it possible to introduce digital dictionaries.
National libraries and other funding agencies have pooled resources for the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (DDSA) programme. They have joined in an initiative for the Digital South Asia Library. The Molesworth Dictionary is funded as a part of this programme. It is available for free use to anybody.
The Journalism and Mass Communication Department of the Pune-based Vishwakarma University has decided to publish a paper to pay tribute to Molesworth on his 150th death anniversary, on July 13, 2021, on behalf of Marathi-speakers.
As the Tarkateertha said, we do owe him a tremendous debt which we cannot forget.
The writer is professor Emeritus, department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Vishwakarma University. He can be reached at drkiranthakur@gmail.com
