Alexander Hamilton (1762-1824) was a British linguist who was one of the first Europeans to study the Sanskrit language. He taught the language to most of the earliest European scholars of Indo-European linguistics.
Hamilton was the first cousin of his namesake, the American statesman Alexander Hamilton.[1] He became a lieutenant in the navy of the East India Company. While stationed in India he joined the Asiatic Society of Bengal founded by William Jones and Charles Wilkins. He also married a Bengali woman.[2] After the death of Jones in India, Wilkins and Hamilton were the only Europeans who had studied Sanskrit. Both returned to Europe. Wilkins remained in England, but Hamilton went to France to collate Sanskrit manuscripts held at the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris. He assisted Wilkins with his revisions to his translation of the Hitopadesha.[3]
After war broke out between Britain and France in 1803 Hamilton was interned as an enemy alien, but was released to carry on his researches at the insistence of the French scholar Constantine Volney. Hamilton taught Sanskrit to Volney and others, including Friedrich Schlegel and Jean-Louis Burnouf, the father of Eugene Burnouf.
In 1813, Hamilton completed his catalogue of the Biblioteque Nationale manuscripts. Following the end of the Napoleonic wars many German scholars came to study with him, notably Franz Bopp and August Wilhelm Schlegel.
Hamilton later returned to London where he held a professorship of Sanskrit and Indian languages.