Joseph Edkins was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Protestant missionary

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

 who spent 57 years in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, 30 of them in Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

. As a Sinologue, he specialized in Chinese religions. He was also a linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, a translator, and a philologist. Writing prolifically, he penned many books about the Chinese language and the Chinese religions especially Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. In his China's Place in Philology (1871), he tries to show that the languages of Europe and Asia have a common origin by comparing the Chinese and Indo-European

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 vocabulary.

Life

Born at Nailsworth

Nailsworth

Nailsworth is a town in Gloucestershire, England, lying in one of the Stroud Valleys in the Cotswolds. It has a population of around 6,600 people and lies on the A46 road....

, Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....

, he graduated from the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 in 1843. He was ordained on December 8, 1847. Sent by the London Missionary Society

London Missionary Society

The London Missionary Society was a non-denominational missionary society formed in England in 1795 by evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists, largely Congregationalist in outlook, with missions in the islands of the South Pacific and Africa...

, he arrived in China on July 22, 1848 at Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, and reached Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

 on September 2. First he worked in the London Missionary Society Press in Shanghai under Walter Henry Medhurst

Walter Henry Medhurst

Walter Henry Medhurst , was an English Congregationalist missionary to China, born in London and educated at St Paul's School, was one of the early translators of the Bible into Chinese language editions.-Early life:...

. From 1852 to 1858 he edited the Chinese annual Chinese and Foreign Concord Almanach (華洋和合通書), later known as the Chinese and Western Almanac (中西通書). During this period of time, he collaborated with Li Shanlan

Li Shanlan

Li Shanlan was a Chinese mathematician of the Qing Dynasty.A native of Haining, Zhejiang, he was fascinated by mathematics since childhood, beginning with the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. He eked out a living by being a private tutor for some years before fleeing to Shanghai in 1852 to...

, Wang Tao and others to translate many Western scientific works into Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

. Besides this, he was involved in Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 translation and an active member of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Royal Asiatic Society

The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was established, according to its Royal Charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia." From its incorporation the Society...

. In the 1850s he traveled extensively in the Shanghai and Ningbo

Ningbo

Ningbo is a seaport city of northeastern Zhejiang province, Eastern China. Holding sub-provincial administrative status, the municipality has a population of 7,605,700 inhabitants at the 2010 census whom 3,089,180 in the built up area made of 6 urban districts. It lies south of the Hangzhou Bay,...

 regions. He also was involved in direct evangelism, and accompanied Hudson Taylor

Hudson Taylor

James Hudson Taylor , was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission . Taylor spent 51 years in China...

 on some of his first canal-boat travels in China, distributing portions of Scripture and Christian tracts.

In March 1858 he left for England. When he returned, he brought his Scottish bride, Jane Rowbotham Stobbs. They were married on February 7, 1859. They settled in Shanghai on September 14 of that same year.

During his years in Shanghai, in July 1860 he visited the Taiping Rebellion

Taiping Rebellion

The Taiping Rebellion was a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who, having received visions, maintained that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, against the ruling Manchu-led Qing Dynasty...

 leaders at Suzhou

Suzhou

Suzhou , previously transliterated as Su-chou, Suchow, and Soochow, is a major city located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province in Eastern China, located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality. The city is situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Taihu Lake and is a part...

, Jiangsu

Jiangsu

' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is "苏" , the second character of its name...

. He made several contacts with the leaders of the "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" in an effort to determine the precise beliefs of this movement. In late March 1861 he spent eleven days in Taiping-held Nanjing

Nanjing

' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...

.

In 1860 the Edkins family moved to Yantai

Yantai

Yantai is a prefecture-level city in northeastern Shandong province, People's Republic of China. Located on the southern coast of the Bohai Sea and the eastern coast of the Laizhou Bay, Yantai borders the cities of Qingdao and Weihai to the southwest and east respectively.The largest fishing...

, Shandong

Shandong

' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...

, and in 1861 to Tianjin

Tianjin

' is a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is, thus, under direct administration of the central government...

. His wife died before 1863 at the age of 22. Edkins remarried to Janet Wood White that year. In May 1863 he settled in Beijing. In 1872, he collaborated with William Alexander Parsons Martin

William Alexander Parsons Martin

William Alexander Parsons Martin was an American Presbyterian missionary to China and translator, famous for having translated a number of important Western treatises into Chinese, such as Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law.He graduated from Indiana University in 1846, known at that...

 to publish the Chinese magazine Peking Magazine (中西聞見錄). The magazine ran for 36 issues, terminating in 1875.

In 1873, he traveled alone to England via the United States, and returned to Beijing in 1876. In 1880 he resigned from the London Missionary Society to become a translator for the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. He was widowed a second time in 1877 and remarried to Johanna Schmidt in 1881. He was appointed by the Customs head to edit and translate a series of Western scientific works into Chinese, and the fruits were the 16 Primers for Western Knowledge (西學啟蒙十六種) published in 1898, which comprised textbooks about zoology, botany, chemistry, geography, physiology, logic and other subjects. In 1903 he survived typhoid and was still writing at the age of 81. He died in Shanghai on Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

 Sunday, 1905.

Works

• A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese as exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect, Shanghai 1853.
• "Phases in the Development of Tauism", Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1st series, 5: 83-99, 1855. (The earliest study in a Western language to include an account of Chinese alchemy, pp. 84–91).
• On Early Tauist Alchemy, North China Herald 1857.
• A Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language, commonly called the Mandarin dialect, Shanghai 1857.
• The Religious Condition of the Chinese; with Observations on the Prospects of Christian Conversion amongst that People, London 1859. Second edition entitled Religion in China: containing a Brief Account of the Three Religions of the Chinese: with Observations on the Prospects of Christian Conversion amongst that People, 1877.
• Progressive Lessons in the Chinese Spoken Language, Shanghai 1862.
• A Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect, Shanghai 1869.
• The Miau-tsi Tribes, Foochow 1870.
• China's Place in Philology: an Attempt to show that the Languages of Europe and Asia have a Common Origin, London 1871
• Introduction to the Study of the Chinese Characters, London 1876
• A Catalogue of Chinese Works in the Bodleian Library, London 1876
• Chinese Buddhism: a Volume of Sketches, Historical, Descriptive, and Critical, London 1880
• The Evolution of the Chinese Language as exemplifying the Origin and Growth of Human Speech, London 1888.
• Opium: Historical Note or the Poppy in China, Shanghai 1898
• The Revenue and Taxation of the Chinese Empire, Shanghai 1903

External links

• Biographical sketch and list of his works, at EDKINS Surname Resource Centre
• Biographical sketch, at the Ricci 21st Century Roundtable database, supported only by 5.0 or later versions of Internet Explorer
• His works published on Hong Kong journals, at Hong Kong Journals Online (HKJO), many pieces, search for "Edkins"