spare was devoted to an inquiry connected with his office. He became engaged upon a minute examination into the state of husbandry in Bengal, and the results of his inquiries were privately printed in 1795. The volume was not only a masterly survey of the conditions of agriculture in India, but a searching criticism of the policy pursued by England, and a comprehensive view of what that policy ought to be. It opposed the renewal of the company's monopoly, and advocated free-trade principles. The work gave no little offence to the directors, and it was not considered advisable to publish it in England.
During the preparation of this volume Colebrooke had been transferred from Tirhut to Purneah, where his recognised administrative ability was much in request, and here he at length began to prosecute the study of oriental languages and especially Sanskrit. During his first years in India the literatures of the East seem to have repelled him by their extravagance and flighty imagery. His was not a mind to tolerate sins of excess in poetry; he was wont to express very contemptuous criticisms on Persian and Arabic literature, and what he had learnt of Hindu culture affected him with a similar repulsion. His fondness for mathematical pursuits, however, and especially astronomy, led him to inquire what degree of proficiency the Hindus had attained in science, while the difficulties attending the administration of justice among natives according to their own law made a study of the latter essential to the proper exercise of the judicial functions with which Colebrooke was now entrusted. The recent foundation of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, and the publication of its valuable papers in 'Asiatic Researches,' had doubtless a share in stimulating Colebrooke's curiosity concerning the actual facts of Hindu antiquity ; but the imperative necessity of a better knowledge of Indian law than could then be obtained from English works was an incentive that pressed most cogently upon the zealous magistrate. Just as revenue duties had stimulated him to undertake a thorough survey of Indian husbandry, so legal functions now compelled him to learn Sanskrit in order to read the Hindu law-books. The code of Gentoo law drawn up by a commission of Brahmans under the direction of Warren Hastings in 1776 was very inadequate to the needs of the law courts, and Sir William Jones had proposed to government the compilation of an extensive code, of both Mohammedan and Hindu law, arranged after the method of Justinian's Pandects, with extracts from the native authorities. Sir William died before he could do much more than plan the work, and it was carried on by a pundit, Jagannatha. The important task of translating this great work was undertaken by Colebrooke. He had already acquired a considerable mastery of the language, in spite of the lack of suitable grammars and dictionaries, which made the task difficult to a degree that can hardly be realised now. But the very refinements of Sanskrit grammar, and the flexibility and capability of the language or, to use the words of Paulinus, ' the admirable craft of the devil which had led the Brahman philosophers to form a language at once so rich and complicated ' attracted the ingenious and exact mind of Colebrooke, and in 1794 he wrote to his father, ' I am now fairly entered among oriental researches, and . . . Sanskrit inquiries.'
The first-fruits of this study appeared in the paper on the ' Duties of a Faithful Hindu Widow,' in the 'Asiatic Researches,' 1794, in which he published various Sanskrit texts relating to the suttee or burning of widows. His appointment in 1795 to the magistracy of Mirzapur, near the great centre of Brahmanical learning at Benares, was a notable advantage, for he soon established friendly relations with the learned men of the Sanskrit College, and obtained access to their manuscripts. Leisure for study was, however, very scanty ; an Indian judge, instead of enjoying the comfortable sinecure with which he was often credited by detractors in England, had ' to hear from three hundred to five hundred causes a month, record his proceedings at large, with all the pleadings, evidence, &c., in writing, furnish monthly reports of every cause decided, monthly accounts of all moneys passing through the court, and correspond on the business of the police, &c., with the native magistrates under him, with the magistrates of other districts, and with government.' Besides ordinary stress of official work, Colebrooke was still further interrupted in his studies (though he had now completed his translation of the ' Digest of Hindu Law ') by being sent on a mission to the court of Nagpur, where he was to carry out the Marquis Wellesley's policy by inducing the Raja of Berar to join the defensive alliance with the company against the power of Scindia, who threatened to support Tippu. By the time Colebrooke arrived at Nagpur in 1799 events bad forestalled him ; Seringapatam had fallen, and Tippu was dead ; and the jealousy and suspicion of the Mahrattas had been so excited by the proceedings of the English in the distribution of the Mysore dominions, that any attempts at conciliation were useless, and an alliance was out of the ques-
