Max Arthur Macauliffe

[S1ngh]

Michael MacAuliffe, also known as Max Arthur Macauliffe, was a senior British administrator in India, a scholar and author, renowned for his translation of Sikh scripture and history into English. Macauliffe converted to Sikhism in the 1860s and was even derided by his British employers for... having "turned a Sikh"

[Singh559]

Has anyone read all of his Sikh History and translation books? I have the digital versions, but I haven't started to read them.

[dalsingh101]

Is there actually any evidence he converted, because, although he appears to be very sympathetic in his works, I don't recall reading anything contemporary suggesting he converted. Are people suggesting he took pahul amrit?

Some people mention that he apparently asked for Japji Sahib to be read on his deathbed. Does anyone know the source of this information? Plus in itself, is this really proof that he fully converted from whatever belief he had before?

Great picture by the way!

[Singh559]

Is there actually any evidence he converted, because, although he appears to be very sympathetic in his works, I don't recall reading anything contemporary suggesting he converted. Are people suggesting he took pahul amrit?

Some people mention that he apparently asked for Japji Sahib to be read on his deathbed. Does anyone know the source of this information? Plus in itself, is this really proof that he fully converted from whatever belief he had before?

Great picture by the way!

Yes, there's plenty of proof. Look at the citations in the link.

http://www.nuigalway.ie/english/tadhg_foley.html

Tadhg Foley (the artist formerly known as ’Timothy P Foley’.) is a graduate of NUI, Galway (BA, MA, HDE) and of the University of Oxford (DPhil). He has taught courses on the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Victorian culture and society, theorising colonization in the nineteenth century, critical theory, and gender and nation in nineteenth-century Ireland. He is Chair of the Board of the Centre for Irish Studies and a member of the Board of Management of the Women’s Studies Centre. He is a member of the Board and a former director of the MA in Culture and Colonialism and he has organised/co-organised several conferences on colonialism, Irish Studies, and Irish-Australian Studies. He is also the Chair of the Archives Working Group. He was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the University of San Francisco (1985-6) and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Irish Studies, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia (2000). His doctoral work was on the concept of ’taste’ in the eighteenth century, an accomplishment in which he himself is conspicuously deficient. His main research interest is in cultural history and the history of ideas in nineteenth-century Ireland and he has collaborated extensively with Professor Tom Boylan of the Department of Economics on the production, distribution, and consumption of economic ideas. He is also engaged in transforming his research on taste into a book. As part of his apostolate to the illustrious obscure, he is at present, under the rubric of colonial/postcolonial studies, especially the interrelationships between conversion, authorship/translation, and colonialism, engaged in research on the works and days of Max Arthur Macauliffe. Macauliffe was a Queen’s College Galway graduate who became a judge in India, converted to Sikhism, did the classic translation of the Granth,the sacred book of the Sikhs, into English, and who published (with Oxford University Press in 1909) the monumental, 6-volume work,The Sikh Religion.

Read the last sentence

[Singh559]

BUMP.

Does anyone know if there's anything about Sir Max Arthur Macauliffe shaving his dhari or was it naturally like that?

[dalsingh101]

BUMP.

Does anyone know if there's anything about Sir Max Arthur Macauliffe shaving his dhari or was it naturally like that?

If he was Sikh, I think he must have been sehajdhari. I couldn't find any mention of him being Amritdhari or keshdhari. There was apparently some hoo ha about him being buried in a Christian graveyard on his passing, with some locals (in London I think) resisting it. The claims that he was reciting Japji Sahib shortly before his death come from his Panjabi Musalmaan servant apparently.

Here is a copy of that piece you referred me to earlier (in case you never got it the first time I posted it):

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49597872/Max-Arthur-Macauliffe-From-Templeglantine-to-the-Golden-Temple-full

By the way, it wasn't uncommon for Europeans to commission portraits/photos of themselves in indigenous attire. We can find lots of similar examples of this.

[Ek0sikh]

Read some parts out of those six and appreciate his work- very honest