DUFF, ALEXANDER (1806-1878), Scottish missionary in India, was born at Auchnahyle, Moulin, Perthshire. At St. An drews university he came under the influence of Dr. Chalmers, and was sent out by the foreign mission committee of the general assembly as their first missionary to India. He was ordained in Aug. 1829, and started at once for India, but was twice ship wrecked before he reached Calcutta in May 1830, and lost all his books and other property. Up to this time Protestant mis sions in India had been successful only in reaching low-caste and outcaste peoples, particularly in Tinevelly and south Travancore. The Hindu and Mohammedan communities had been practically untouched. Duff therefore devised the policy of an educational mission. He first opened an English school in which the Bible was the centre of the school work, and along with it all kinds of secular knowledge were taught from the rudiments upwards to a university standard. The school soon began to expand into a missionary college, and a Government minute was adopted on March 7, 1835, to the effect that in higher education the object of the British Government should be the promotion of European science and literature among the natives of India.
After six years' furlough in England, Duff returned in 1840 to India. In 1839 the earl of Auckland, governor-general, had yielded to the "Orientalists" who opposed Duff, and adopted a policy which was a compromise between the two. At the Disrup tion of 1843 Duff sided with the Free Church, gave up the college buildings, with all their effects, and with unabated courage set to work to provide a new institution. He had the support of Sir James Outram and Sir Henry Lawrence, and the encouragement of seeing a new band of converts, including several young men of high caste. In 1844 Viscount Hardinge opened Government ap pointments to all who had studied in institutions similar to Duff's foundation. In the same year Duff took part in founding the Calcutta Review, of which from 1845 to 1849 he was editor. In 1849 he returned home. He was moderator of the Free Church assembly in 1851.
In 1856 Duff returned to India. He gave much thought and time to the University of Calcutta, which owes its examination system and the prominence given to physical sciences to his in fluence. In 1863 Sir Charles Trevelyan offered him the post of vice-chancellor of the university, but his health compelled him to leave India. He continued his work for foreign missions in different parts of the world, and was the first occupant of the chair of foreign missions at New college, Edinburgh; and at his death, on Feb. 12, 1878, left his personal property to found a lectureship on foreign missions on the model of the Bampton lectures.
See his Life, by George Smith (2 vols.).