Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/269

 appointed to the public service in 1823, first as assistant to the collector and magistrate of Salem, from which office he was shortly afterwards transferred to the Southern Mahratta country, then administered by the government of Madras. In the first year of his service in that part of India he was present at the insurrection at Kittúr, when the political agent, Mr. Thackeray, and three officers of a troop of horse artillery sent thither to maintain order, and a large number of men, were killed; Elliot and Stevenson, a brother assistant, being made prisoners, and detained for several weeks in the hands of the insurgents at great peril of their lives. In the latter part of Elliot's service in the Southern Mahratta country that territory was annexed to the Bombay presidency, and Elliot, in the ordinary course, would have been retransferred to a Madras district, but at the special request of Sir John Malcolm, then governor of Bombay, he was allowed to remain until he left India on furlough in 1833. Leaving Bombay on 11 Dec. in that year in company with Mr. Robert Pringle of the Bombay civil service, Elliot returned to Europe by way of the Red Sea, landing at Kosseir, and riding across the Egyptian desert to Thebes, whence, taking the Nile route as far as Cairo, he crossed into Palestine, and was present, in company with the Hon. Robert Curzon, the author of 'The Monasteries of the Levant,' at the exhibition of the holy fire in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, when so many people were killed (, Monasteries of the Levant, ch. xvi.) After visiting Constantinople, Athens, Corfu, and Rome, he reached England on 5 May 1835. In the autumn of the following year he again embarked for India as private secretary to his relative, Lord Elphinstone, who had been appointed governor of Madras, and the remainder of his Indian service was spent in the Madras presidency.

During the years immediately succeeding Lord Elphinstone's retirement from the government, which took place in 1842, Elliot was employed upon the ordinary duties of a member of the board of revenue; but in 1845 he was deputed to investigate the condition of Guntúr, one of the districts commonly known as the Northern Sirkárs, where there had been a serious falling off in the revenue and a general impoverishment of the people, caused, as Elliot's inquiries proved, by the wasteful extravagance and extortion of the zemindárs, and by the malversation of the native revenue officials. Elliot's recommendations, involving, among other matters, a complete survey and reassessment of the district and the permanent resumption of the defaulting zemiudáries, which had been already sold for arrears of revenue and bought in by the government, were sanctioned, although upon terms less liberal to the zemindárs than Elliot had proposed; and at the instance of the court of directors, who pronounced a high encomium upon his work at Guntúr, he was appointed commissioner, with the powers of the board of revenue in all revenue matters, for the administration of the whole of the northern sirkárs. In this responsible charge he remained until 1854, when he was appointed a member of the council of the governor of Madras. He finally retired from the civil service, and left India early in 1860.

As a member of council Elliot's duties, though not more arduous, were of a more varied character than those which had devolved upon him as a revenue officer. Besides the various revenue questions which came before the government there were many subjects of great public interest with which he was eminently qualified to deal. Among these were the question of native education, and such matters as the relations of the British government in India with christian missions on the one hand and with the religious endowments of the Hindus and Muhammadans on the other hand. With the natives he had throughout his service maintained a free and friendly intercourse. Native education was a subject to which he had long paid considerable attention. He had also been throughout his Indian life a cordial friend, and, in his private capacity, a generous supporter of christian missions. In connection with education he was a staunch advocate of the grant-in-aid system. While senior member of council it devolved upon him, owing to the illness of the governor. Lord Harris, to preside on the occasion of the public reading at Madras of the queen's proclamation issued on her majesty's assumption of the direct government of India.

In addition to his labours as a public servant Elliot devoted much time to investigations into the archælogy and the natural history of India. At a very early period of his residence in the Southern Mahratta country Elliot commenced his archæological inquiries. Working in concert with a young Brahman who was attached to his office, he mastered the archaic characters in which the old inscriptions were written, and during the remainder of his life in India employed much of his leisure in deciphering and translating the inscriptions found by him in various parts of the country. In zoology, ornithology, and botany he took the keenest interest. In 1837 he published in the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society' a paper on 'Hindu 