Buchanan, Claudius°
BUCHANAN, CLAUDIUS°
BUCHANAN, CLAUDIUS ° (d. 1815), Christian missionary and collector of Hebrew manuscripts. Buchanan went to Calcutta as chaplain in 1797, and was appointed professor and vice provost of the College of Fort William. During repeated visits to southern India between 1806 and 1808 Buchanan stayed in Cochin searching for ancient Hebrew manuscripts. His methods alarmed the Jewish population. They claimed that they were being robbed of their records and sought the intervention of the chief magistrate of Cochin. Buchanan also made a facsimile of Jewish copperplate inscriptions and was accused of having taken away the original. He deposited the manuscripts, obtained from both Jews and Syrian Christians, in the Cambridge University library.
bibliography:
C. Buchanan, Christian Researches in Asia (18122), 210–49; H.N. Pearson, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of C. Buchanan, 2 vols. (1817); T. Whitehouse, Some Historical Notices of Cochin (1839), 31–34; T.C. Tychsen, De inscriptionibus, indicis, et privilegiis judaeorum… a Buchanan adlatae (1819), 12–17; T. Yeates, Collation of an Indian Copy of the Hebrew Pentateuch (1812); Schechter, in: jqr, 6 (1893/94), 136–45; Fischel, in: jaos, 87 (1967), 245–6.
[Walter Joseph Fischel]