Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/33

Rh 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 retained 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 Astronomy, 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 completed in less than two years. It was during his engagement on this work that he was appointed to a judicial situation at Mirzapore, 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 Profesmr of Sanscrit in the College of F011. 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 investigations in oriental literature and oriental science. In the course of a few years there appeared from his pen many profound dissertations in the Asiatic Researchm, 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 Sanserit Dictionary, and two extensive Treatises on the Hindu Law of Inheritance, together with editions of the Amera Cosha, a Sanscrit Vocabulary, and of the Hitépadésé, or “ Salutary Instruction", which had been translated by Mr. Wilkins, 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 India7 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-