60 Col. Allan on Father Tieffentaller. [Apeil, 



from G-ermany (before 1739 and who died 30th March, 1751 at Agrah) by Jai- 

 Singh II, the Astronomer Rajah of Jaipur. Father Tie^erxtaller was compelled 

 by poverty to leave Narwar early in the year 1765, and he resolved to proceed 

 to Bengal, as he says " to test the liberality and generosity of the celebrated 

 English nation." He saw Datiah, Jhansi, Kalinjar, Pannah, and Allahabad, 

 in his journey ; thence he proceeded to Lucknow, Banaras, Patna and finally to 

 Calcutta, returning to Allahabad in October of the same year. In 1766, he 

 visited Korrah, but proceeded ultimately to Lucknow, and spent the remain- 

 der of his life there ; during which time he occupied five years in travelling 

 over the greater part of Audh including Farrukhabad, and to the foot of the 

 Kamaon hills, and the falls of the river Ghagra. He took careful bearings of 

 all the places of note, having numerous valuable scientific instruments in his 

 possession ; and he certainly appears to have been eminently qualified for the 

 task he imposed on himself. 



Dm-ing his latter years he suffered severely from repeated attacks of 

 gout, in addition to the infirmities of age ; and he died, aged upwards of 

 eighty years, at his residence in Lucknow on the 5th July, 1785. His re- 

 mains were conveyed to Agrah, and interred in the Catholic cemetery there. 

 The Register of Baptisms and Marriages, in his own handwriting, recorded 

 generally in Latin, but occasionally in his native German, extended from 4th 

 February, 1765, to 31st May, 1784, and was preserved among the ecclesias- 

 tical documents belonging to the Catholic Church of St. Mary at Lucknow. 

 On the outbreak of the mutiny in June 1857, all these interesting records 

 were burnt, together with the Church and the house of the Priest where they 

 were kept. I fortunately, during a residence at Lucknow just before that 

 sad year, made extracts from those papers, and am enabled to state the exact 

 period of the death of F. TiefFentaller, which date had been previously un- 

 known in the notices published of this learned Jesuit. The ' Biographie 

 Universelle, and other foreign authorities, merely state that he was " alive, 

 and living at Agrah, in 1785." Strange to say no English work on Biography 

 takes any notice of his name, at least none of those I have been able to con- 

 sult, such as Chalmers, Rose, &c., an omission difficult to account for ; and even 

 the French authorities as well as the Italian and German ones are very meagre 

 and brief It would not have been necessary to have entered so fully into 

 the Indian career of this earnest inquirer into topics of interest connected 

 with this country, but for the dearth of published materials regarding him 

 to which I have above alluded, and I shall conclude this paper with a 

 notice of the writings of Father Tieffentaller, whose name I may mention has 

 thus been wi'itten on the authority of his own signature (which I have seen 

 verified) and not, as generally given, Tieffenthaler or Tliieffentaler. 



During an iminterrupted residence of nearly forty-two years in India, he 

 employed the leisure houi's of his missionary life in collecting information 



