# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Haughton, Graves Champney

Middle name Chamney in the ODNB.
​HAUGHTON, Sir GRAVES CHAMPNEY (1788–1849), orientalist, born in 1788, was the second son of John Haughton, a Dublin physician, by the daughter of Edward ​Archer of Mount John, co. Wicklow. He was educated principally in England, and, having obtained a military cadetship on the Bengal establishment of the East India Company in 1808, proceeded to India. He gained his first commission on 13 March 1810. At the cadet institution of Baraset, near Calcutta, he so distinguished himself by his progress in Hindustani as to win the highest reward of the institution, a sword and a handsome pecuniary donation. After serving some time with his regiment, Haughton was among the first who availed themselves of the permission, granted in 1812 by the government of Bengal to young officers, to study oriental languages in the college of Fort William at Calcutta, and he there received seven medals, three degrees of honour, and various pecuniary rewards for his proficiency in Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, Sanskrit, and Bengali. On 16 Dec. 1814 he was promoted to a lieutenancy. Ill-health, caused by application to study, obliged him to return on furlough to England at the end of 1815. In 1817 he was appointed assistant oriental professor in the East India College at Haileybury (Royal Kalendar, 1818, p. 293). Upon the retirement of Alexander Hamilton in 1819 he succeeded to the professorship of Sanskrit and Bengali at Haileybury, and held it until 1827 (ib . 1820, p. 282). During this period he published some excellent class books, among which may be mentioned ‘Rudiments of Bengálí Grammar,’ 4to, 1821; ‘Bengálí Selections, with Translations and a Vocabulary,’ 4to, 1822; and ‘A Glossary, Bengálí and English, to explain the Tótá-Itihás, the Batrís Singhásan, the History of Rájá Krishna Chandra, the Purusha-Paríkhyá, the Hitópadésa (translated by Mrityunjaya),’ 4to, 1825 (assisted by John Panton Gubbins, then a student at the college). He also issued an admirable edition of the Sanskrit text of the ‘Institutes of Menu,’ 2 vols. 4to, 1825, with Sir William Jones's translation and a few notes. Another edition, by the Rev. P. Percival, was published at Madras, 8vo, 1863; a third edition, by Standish Grove Grady, at London, 8vo, 1869. Ill-health prevented him from adding a third volume, which was to have contained either the whole or a selection of the commentary of Cullu'ca Bhatta.
Haughton resigned his commission on 12 Feb. 1819 (Dodwell and Miles, Indian Army List, pp. 138–9), and was created honorary M.A. at Oxford on 23 June of that year. He was elected F.R.S. on 15 Nov. 1821, a foreign member of the Asiatic Society of Paris in 1822, a corresponding member of the Royal Society of Berlin in 1837, and a member of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta in 1838. He was also a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and foreign member of the Institute of France. He took a warm interest in the formation of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, of which he was an original member. He discharged the duties of honorary secretary from November 1831 to May 1832, when the labour of bringing out his ‘Dictionary, Bengálí and Sanskrit, explained in English,’ 4to, 1833, compelled him to resign. Among his contributions to the society's ‘Transactions’ was a brief note in vindication of Sir H. T. Colebrooke's views of the Vedanta philosophy against the remarks of Colonel Vans Kennedy. The latter replied angrily, and Haughton ably retorted in the monthly ‘Asiatic Journal’ for November 1835. This communication, with some additions, was printed separately in the following December. In 1832 he printed for private circulation ‘A short Inquiry into the Nature of Language, with a view to ascertain the original meanings of Sanskrit prepositions; elucidated by comparisons with the Greek and Latin,’ 4to; another edition, 4to, 1834. During the same year he was a candidate for the Boden professorship of Sanskrit at Oxford, but withdrew in favour of his old fellow-student, Horace Hayman Wilson. On this occasion he received a complimentary address from two hundred professors, fellows, and graduates, including seven heads of houses. On 18 July 1833 he was made a knight of the Guelphic order (Gent. Mag. 1833, pt. ii. p. 76). An able metaphysical paper, published in the ‘Asiatic Journal’ for March 1836, on the Hindu and European notions of cause and effect, was followed in 1839 by his ‘Prodromus; or an Inquiry into the first Principles of Reasoning; including an Analysis of the Human Mind,’ 8vo, intended as a prelude to a larger work upon the necessary connection, relation, and dependence of physics, metaphysics, and morals, entitled ‘The Chain of Causes,’ of which the first volume only appeared, fol. 1842. He printed a tabular view of his system on a single folio sheet in 1835, exhibiting the ‘development of minds and morals from their original divine source.’ In 1833 he published an ‘Inquiry into the Nature of Cholera, and the Means of Cure;’ in 1840 a ‘Letter to the Right Hon. C. W. Williams Wynn on the danger to which the Constitution is exposed from the encroachments of the Courts of Law;’ and in 1847 he printed in the ‘Philosophical Magazine’ experiments to prove the common nature of magnetism, cohesion, adhesion, and viscosity. Haughton spent much of his later life in Paris. He ​died of cholera at St. Cloud on 28 Aug. 1849 (ib. 1849, pt. ii. 420). He found his best friends among his fellow-students. Upon the death of Sir Charles Wilkins in May 1836 he wrote a memoir in the ‘Asiatic Journal.’ He was intimately acquainted with Dr. F. A. Rosen, and liberally helped to raise an appropriate monument to his memory.
[Annual Report of Royal Asiatic Society for May 1850, in vol. xiii. of Journal, pp. ii–v; Wilson's Dublin Directory, 1790, p. 121; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886, ii. 626.]
G. G.