Orientalist Henry Thomas Colebrooke passed away on this day.
In the early 1780s, Colebrooke, having arrived in India from England, joined the East India Company in Calcutta as a writer. On his appointment as assistant collector in the revenue department at Tirhut later he wrote Remarks on the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal.
After appointment to several other posts in the British administration and judiciary, he was appointed honorary professor of Hindu law and Sanskrit at the college of Fort William. He would be elected President of the Asiatic Society.
After his return to England, he founded the Royal Asiatic Society there.
Following the death of William Jones in 1794, Colebrooke had continued Jones’s work on Hindu law. He wrote his Sanskrit Grammar (1805) when he was in Calcutta and also his Essay on the Vedas (1805), both of which were regarded as important texts. His other books were on ancient Indian law, philosophy and mathematics.
He collected botanical samples.