page_title: Edward Hamilton Aitken
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Edward Hamilton Aitken / Early life
context_page_description: Edward Hamilton Aitken was a civil servant in India, better known for his humorist writings on natural history in India and as a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society. He was well known to Anglo-Indians by the pen-name of Eha.
context_section_description: Eha was born at Satara in the Bombay Presidency on 16 August 1851. His father was the Rev. James Aitken, missionary of the Free Church of Scotland. His mother was a sister of the Rev. Daniel Edward, a missionary to the Jews at Breslau for some fifty years. He was educated by his father in India. His higher education was obtained at Bombay and Pune. He passed M.A. and B.A. of Bombay University, first on the list, and won the Homejee Cursetjee prize with a poem in 1880. From 1870 to 1876, he taught Latin at the Deccan College in Pune. He also knew Greek and was known to be able to read the Greek Testament without the aid of a dictionary.  He grew up in India, and it was only later in life that he visited England for the first time, and he found the weather of Edinburgh severe.
caption: Illustration from his Concerning Animals and Other Matters
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