Herbert de Jager

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Herbert de Jager (* 1634 in Zwammerdam ; † January 6, 1694 Batavia ) was a trained orientalist who served the Dutch East India Company as an outstanding expert in numerous Asian languages ​​and who had a great influence on contemporary exploration of Asia through letters, reports and material broadcasts .

Life

Herbert de Jager was born as the son of a farmer in Zwammerdam, near Leiden. The Amsterdam mayor and scholar Nicolaes Witsen (1641–1717) played an important role in his career as a sponsor. De Jager first studied theology at the expense of the Dutch East India Company from 1656, but then turned to mathematics and the oriental languages. His academic teacher at the University of Leiden was the famous orientalist and mathematician Jacobus Golius (1596–1667). A formal degree was apparently not possible for him.

Letter from de Jager to Georg Eberhard Rumpf in Ambon. Batavia, May 20, 1683 (from Valentini, 1714)

In 1662 he was sent to the East Indies, with the rank of sub-merchant, which underlines the expectations that one had. The company also provided him with books and instruments and released him from the obligation to set up a surety for sub-traders. A recommendation made to the Governor General and Council of India in Batavia certifies that he has good knowledge of botany, astronomy and fortification ("fortificatien") in addition to his linguistic and mathematical skills.

After his arrival in Batavia he was initially employed as the first man in the secretariat. Malay was probably the first of the many languages ​​that he learned locally. In September 1665 he was then sent to the Persian port city of Gamron ( Bandar-Abbas ), where he arrived in February of the following year. Here and at the court of the Safavid rulers in Isfahan , he made a contribution to the interests of the Dutch until 1670 and studied the Persian language. Ten years followed on the coromandel coast in the southeast of the Indian peninsula, which was then under Dutch control . The ruler of the Golkonda Sultanate was particularly impressed by his knowledge of Persian. During this time he studied Sanskrit and Tamil, the Dravidian language Telugu . When he was promoted to a merchant in October 1673, he not only emphasized his valuable services as a language mediator, but also found that he was a good engineer. Such talents were rare. When his superiors in India wanted him to supervise the minting in Pulicat in 1674, the people in Batavia were not very enthusiastic and thought that their skills could certainly be put to better use in Ceylon.

Page from Herbert de Jager's treatise "De Sementina" (Miscellanea curiosa, 1684)

In 1680 de Jager was transferred to Batavia, but the following year he went back to Persia. In 1684, the Lemgo doctor and researcher Engelbert Kaempfer arrived in Isfahan as a member of a Swedish embassy. De Jager was very impressed by Kaempfer's zeal for research and thirst for knowledge and supported him in exploring Persia. Letters in Kaemmer's estate illustrate the intensity of the exchange and the friendly relationship between the two. In 1687 de Jager was recalled to Batavia. Kaempfer, who had separated from the legation and finally found a doctorate with the East India Company, also arrived in Batavia in 1689 after a year in India. De Jager and some influential personalities encouraged him to explore Japan, as no current publication had appeared for decades. A memorandum written by de Jager then served Kaempfer in Japan as a guide for his two-year exploration.

De Jager also put a lot of energy into exploring the flora of East India. He shared his observations with Witsen and Kaempfer, with the Hanau-born VOC scholar Georg Eberhard Rumpf and the Danzig merchant and botanist Jakob Breyne (1637–1697). De Jager also maintained close relationships with the doctor Andreas Cleyer (1634–1698), who ran the Batavian pharmacies and searched the Asian flora for usable medicinal plants and collected botanical materials during two stays in Japan. The illustrated treatise “De Sementina”, written for Cleyer in January 1681, which abounds with quotes in Arabic script and links information from East and West, gives an impression of the breadth of the educational horizon and his language skills. The length of his letters is overwhelming, even in comparison to other letters from scholars of his time. A letter to Rumpf dated May 20, 1683, printed in folio format, still takes up more than eight pages. A second letter, again sent to Rumpf almost seven weeks later, has nine printed pages, but is always under the more than fourteen pages of a letter from February 1989. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. A box with inheritance materials, which arrived in Amsterdam in 1695 and was later lost , was filled with beschrijvingen van planten . Unfortunately only a fraction of it survived the times.

Acacia branch from Herbert de Jager's treatise "De Sementina" (Miscellanea curiosa, 1684)

The immense hard work was at the expense of sociability. Kaempfer reported from Batavia in 1689 that "Mr. de Jager" was "in his own hard work and solitude in the best of health and undisturbed". He placed little value on material gain. The patron Witsen, whom de Jager had provided for many years with reports, drawings, seeds and plants, wrote in 1713 that de Jager's scholarship was the reason that he died poor in Batavia. When Kaempfers returned to Europe, de Jager was only partially operational. A resolution of April 7, 1693 regrets that he “fell into gloom in his old age”. Details about the circumstances of his death are not known.

A detailed treatise on the extraction of the dye indigo and another on acacia and the medicine Catechu appeared in the Leopoldina's ephemeris during his lifetime .

Witsen wrote in 1713 that de Jager had left behind a treasure trove of learned records, all of which, however, were neglected and hardly aroused anyone's curiosity. According to Professor Michael Bernhard Valentini from Giessen , Johann Gottfried Vitus “brought quite a lot of Dutch MSS. from Mr. Herbertie de Jager's estate ”from East India to Worms, where he established himself as a“ materialist and trader ”. Vitus passed one and the other "for money and good words" on to Valentini, who in 1704 published some letters. A Persian dictionary and various Malay and Persian documents passed into the possession of the Council of India and Sergeant-Major Isaac de l'Ostal de Saint-Martin , who, however, also blessed the temporal a few years later.

De Jager was probably the best connoisseur of numerous non-European languages ​​of his time and, as a natural scientist, a sought-after correspondent for many European scholars, who spread his messages in a variety of ways.

Works

  • De Herbae, Indigo dictae, satione, cultur, & extractione coloris Indigo dicti, circa Tsinsiam, in regionibus Orientalibus. In: Miscellanea curiosa sive ephemeridum medico-physicarum Germanicarum Academiae Caesareo-Leopoldinae Naturae Curiosorum, Decuria 2nd Annus 2 (1683), pp. 5-7.
  • De Sementina. In: Miscellanea curiosa sive ephemeridum medico-physicarum Germanicarum Academiae Caesareo-Leopoldinae Naturae Curiosorum, Decuria 2nd Annus 3 (1684), pp. 1-11.
  • Michael Bernhard Valentini: Oost-Indianische Send-Brief, From all sorts of rare plants, trees, cheers, also other rarities belonging to the nature termination and Artzney art. Franckfurt am Mayn: Zunner, 1714 (letter from Herbert de Jager to Eberhard Rumpf)

literature

  • F. de Haan: Uit Oude notarispapieren I . In: Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Landend Volkenkunde, 4 (1900), pp. 297–308.
  • F. de Haan: Herbert de Jager . In: F. de Haan: Priangan. De Preanger-Regentschappen onder het Nederlandsch Bestuur to 1811 . Eerste Deel, II: Personalia . Kolff et al., Batavia et al. 1910, pp. 220-224.
  • Engelbert Kaempfer : Works . Critical edition in individual volumes. Volume 2: Detlef Haberland : Letters 1683–1715 . Iudicium, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89129-932-X , pp. 265-274, 341-350, 185-188 (also: Köln, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2000).
  • Elke Werger-Klein: Engelbert Kaempfer, Botanist at the VOC . In: Detlef Haberland (Ed.): Engelbert Kaempfer. Work and Effect Lectures at the symposia in Lemgo (19–22 September 1990) and Tokyo (15–18 December 1990). Steiner, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-515-05995-4 , pp. 39-60 ( Boethius 32).
  • Peter Kornicki. European japanology at the end of the seventeenth century . In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Vol. 56 Part 3, 1993, pp. 502-525.
  • PA Leupe: Herbert de Jager . In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- and Folklore . 3rd Volgr., Vol. 4, 1861, ISSN  0006-2294 , pp. 17-22 ( online ); 4th Volgr., Vol. 3, 1869, pp. 67-97. ( Online )
  • Denys Lombard: A propos d'un manuscrit oublie de Herbert de Jager (1683) . In: Marijke J. Klokke (Ed.): Fruits of inspiration . Studies in honor of Prof. JG de Casparis, retired Professor of the early history and archeology of South and Southeast Asia at the Univ. of Leiden, the Netherlands on the occasion of his 85th birthday. Egbert Forsten, Groningen 2001, ISBN 90-6980-137-X , pp. 243-254 ( Gonda indological studies 11).
  • Wolfgang Michel : Herbert de Jager . Engelbert Kaempfer: Works . Critical edition in individual volumes. Volume 1, Part 2: Wolfgang Michel, Barend J. Terwiel (Ed.): Today's Japan . Iudicium, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89129-931-1 , pp. 116-118.
  • Wolfgang Michel: On the Background of Engelbert Kaempfer's Studies of Japanese Herbs and Drugs . In: Nihon Ishigaku Zasshi - Journal of the Japan Society of Medical History , Vol. 48, No. 4, December 2002, pp. 692-720.
  • François Valentyn: Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën, vervattende Een Naaukeurige en Uitvoerige Verhandelinge van Nederlands Mogentheyd [...] . 5 volumes (9 parts). Joannes van Braam et al., Dordrecht et al. 1724–1726 (reprint: van Wijnen, Franeker 2002–2004).

Remarks

  1. ↑ The most detailed biography to date is still that of Leupe (1862/69).
  2. ↑ Michel (2002)
  3. ↑ See Valentini (1714), pp. 5ff.
  4. ↑ See Breyne's work Prodromi fasciculi rariorum plantarum (1739), p. 7
  5. ↑ D. Haberland (2001), pp. 265-274, 341-350, 185-188
  6. ↑ Valentini (1714), pp. 5-13
  7. ↑ Haberland (2001), p. 319
  8. ^ Nicolaes Witsen to Gijsbert Cuper, April 9, 1713. Reproduced in JF Gebhard: Het Leven van Mr. Nicolaas Cornelisz. Witsen. Utrecht, 1881-1882, Volume 2, p. 361
  9. ^ Haan (1900), p. 307.
  10. ^ The underlying Dutch manuscripts by de Jager's hand are kept in the Berlin State Library.
  11. ^ Letter from Nicolaes Witsen to Gijsbert Cuper of April 9, 1713. Reproduced in Gebhard (1881-82), Volume 2, p. 361.
  12. ↑ Valentini (1704), introduction (unpaginated).
  13. ↑ The manuscripts are now in the Giessen University Library. Valentini's publication saw a second edition in 1714.
  14. ^ Haan (1900), p. 302.
personal data
SURNAME Jager, Herbert de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jager, Herbertus de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Orientalist, naturalist, VOC businessman
DATE OF BIRTH 1634
PLACE OF BIRTH Zwammerdam
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1694
Place of death Batavia