11 



arrival in India of those tastes for severe and abstract studies for 

 which he was afterwards so celebrated ; and we consequently find 

 that, whilst resident at Purneah, he devoted much of his time to the 

 wild and animating field-sports of the East, for which he long re- 

 tained a passionate fondness. He made his first appearance as an 

 author in 1792, in a Treatise on the Agriculture and Commerce of 

 Bengal ; and it was about this period that he began, with all the 

 ardour and energy which distinguished his character, the study of 

 the Sanscrit language, chiefly with a view to acquire a knowledge 

 of the Lilawati and other Sanscrit treatises on Algebra and Astro- 

 nomy, which the somewhat extravagant speculations of Bailly and 

 others had begun to bring into notice. He subsequently undertook 

 the translation of the Digest of the Hindu Laws of Contracts and 

 Successions, which had been compiled under the direction of Sir 

 William Jones, a most laborious and difficult task, which he com- 

 pleted in less than two years. It was during his engagement on 

 this work that he was appointed to a judicial situation at Mirza- 

 pore, a position singularly suited to his tastes and pursuits, from its 

 vicinity to Benares, the great repository of the ancient treasures of 

 the literature of Hindostan, and the place of residence of its most 

 learned expounders. 



In the year 1800 he was removed to Calcutta, and raised to 

 the highest judicial situation in the native courts of India, at the 

 same time that he was made President of the Board of Revenue, 

 Member of the Supreme Council, and Honorary Professor of San- 

 scrit in the College of Fort William. But the important official 

 duties which he was thus called upon to discharge seem rather to 

 have stimulated, than to have checked, his labours and investiga- 

 tions in oriental literature and oriental science. In the course of a 

 few years there appeared from his pen many profound dissertations 

 in the Asiatic Researches, on the Vedanta System of Philosophy, on 

 Sanscrit and Pracrit Poetry and Grammar, on the Indian Classes, 

 on the Origin and Tenets of the Mahometan Sects, on the Jains, on 

 the Indian and Arabian Division of the Signs of the Zodiac, and 

 on the Notions of the Hindu Astronomers on the Precession of the 

 Equinoxes and the Motions of the Planets ; to which must be 

 added the first volume of a very elaborate Sanscrit Grammar, the 

 translation of the Peostra, a Sanscrit Dictionary, and two extensive 

 Treatises on the Hindu Law of Inheritance, together with editions 

 of the Amera Cosha, a Sanscrit Vocabulary, and of the Hitopadesa, 

 or " Salutary Instruction", which had been translated by Mr. Wil- 

 kins, and which is more commonly known under the name of the 

 " Fables of Pilpay", 



It was some time after Mr. Colebrooke's return to this country 

 that he published, in 1817, a translation of the Lilawati and Vija- 

 Ganita, Sanscrit treatises on arithmetic, algebra and mensuration, to 

 which was prefixed a dissertation on the early history of algebra and 

 arithmetic in India, Arabia and Italy, which is equally remarkable 

 for its profound knowledge of Hindu and Arabian literature and 

 its correct views of the relations of oriental and ancient and mo- 



