Wilken

Wilken, GEORGE ALEXANDER, a distinguished ethnographer, was born, 13th March 1847, at Pomohen in Java, son of a missionary. After his education at Rotterdam, he served eleven years in the Dutch Indian Civil Service, returning home on furiough in 1880. The year after he became lecturer in the Leyden Municipal Institute. Already in 1884 the university had given him an honorary doctorate, and in 1885 he became its professor of the Geography and Ethnography of the Indian Archipelago. He died at Leyden, 28th August 1891. The essays on Indian ethnology and folklore in the Indische Gids and the Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut possess a value quite unusual even in such publications. One article, for example, on spirit-worship among the races of the Indian Archipelago, alone extends to 256 pages. Others treat with unexampled fullness of knowledge and clearness of exposition native Dutch Indian theories of relationship and the laws of marriage and inheritance, marriage and betrothal customs, cretinism, the couvaide, circumcision, &c. Also on matriarchy among the ancient Arabs he published a solid work in 1884. Vol. i. of a collected edition by Dr Pleyte appeared in 1892.