Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/113

 EARLIEST EUROPEAN WRITERS 89 viz., (2) Bengal translation (by N. B, Edmonstone) of Regulations, etc, by Regulations for the administration N. B. Edmonstone. of Justice in the Fouzdary Criminal Courts in Bengal, Behar and Orissa, passed by the Governor- General in Council on the 3rd December, 1790, Caleutta, i791; (4) Bengal Translation (by N. B. Edmonstone) of the Regulations for the guidance of the Magistrates passed by the Governor-General in Council in the Revenue Department on the 18th May, 1792, with supplementary enactments, Caleutta, 1792. The next important work in our survey ‘is Forster’s Forster’s Vocabulary, Vocabulary, the first dictionary of the the first Bengali- English dictionary, 1799-1802. moment, as it was indeed &% work language, and it will detain us fora of merit and for a long time considered to be the most authoritative and standard publication on the subject. ! Henry Pitts Forster, born? in 1761, of whose early Henry Pitts Forster. life little seems. to be known, 1761-1815. entered Bengal Service of the Com- pany on August 7, 1783, and rose to be the Collector of Tipperah in 1793 and Registrar of the Dewani ‘ Adalat of the 24 Parganas in 1794. In 1803-04, he was employed at the Caleutta Mint of which he rose to be the 1825), the source of all dictionaries of later times, on Forster’s Vocabu- lary. The first Bengali dictionary is, of course, Manoel da Assump- gad’s Vocabulario in Portuguese, which has been already mentioned, date of 1766 with a query. But it appears from the obituary notices in the Calcutta Government Gazette of 1815 (Sep. 14) and in the Calcutta Monthly Journal for September, 1815 (p. 285) that Forster was aged 54 at the time of his death. In that case, his birth-date would be 1761, which is here adopted, 12
 * Carey based his famous Dictionary of the Bengali Language (1815-
 * The Dictionary of National Biography gives the hypothetical