tion. After the usual oriental delays and excuses, Colebrooke left Nagpur in 1801, with a sense of unavoidable failure. The subsequent struggles with the Mahratta states, ending in the victories of Assaye and Argaum, and the annexation of Cuttack, showed the temper which the Mysore proceedings had evoked.
Meanwhile the ' Digest ' had been published in four folio volumes (Calcutta, 1798), and Colebrooke had received the thanks of the governor-general. The work had taken him two years of hard labour, and he had refused remuneration ; he had 'committed himself,' he wrote, 'to disinterestedness in literary labours.' But the value and thoroughness of the work, joined to other evidence of his capability as a judge, led to his appointment to a seat on the bench of the new court of appeal at Calcutta in 1801, and he became the president of the bench in 1805. Simultaneously Lord Wellesley appointed him professor of Hindu law and Sanskrit at the recently founded college of Fort William, the repute of which it was intended to raise by attaching to it the most conspicuous names in Indian studies, who were to give their countenance and guidance to the institution without salary. Colebrooke was too deeply occupied to give lectures, but he assisted in examinations, and undertook a 'Sanskrit Grammar' in recognition of the compliment which had been paid him. This grammar, which he had for some years contemplated, was a methodical arrangement of the intricate rules of Panini and his commentators, and, lacking illustrations and examples, was too complicated and difficult for the use of beginners, who found Wilkins's grammar, published at nearly the same time, better suited to their needs. But Colebrooke's work, of which the first volume alone appeared, 1805, had the merit of placing the results of the native grammarians in their true light for the first time, and vindicating their authority against the scholars who had regarded them as of little value. It is also interesting to note how his studies at this period foreshadowed many of the discoveries of the as yet unborn science of comparative philology.
In spite of 'continuous labour from morning till sunset ' at the business of his office, he contrived to do a considerable amount of valuable scholarly work. Indeed, his best efforts belong to this busy period, for it was during his judicial employment at Calcutta that he wrote his essays on the Sanskrit and Pracrit poetry and languages, his papers on the religious ceremonies of the Hindus, his 'Observations on the Sect of Jains,' and, above all, his 'Essay on the Vedas.' His vigorous mind found relaxation in a change, not a cessation, of study, and after the long business hours of the day, filled with trying judicial duties, he would turn with fresh zest to his Sanskrit manuscripts, and would be found in his study, multis drcumfusus libris. He was at all times a devourer of books, and it is recorded that when on a voyage nothing printed could be obtained but the technical library of the ship's surgeon, Colebrooke set himself to a vigorous course of medical studies, of which he soon obtained a remarkable mastery. In Sanskrit his reading must have been immense, since every paper he wrote testifies not merely to his originality and ingenious turn of intellect, but to the breadth and extent of his researches ; and it must be remembered that all this oriental reading had to be pursued in manuscript, and there was hardly a printed book to smooth his progress. The essay on the Vedas was among his most important works ; it was the first authentic account of these ancient scriptures. 'It must have been a work of great labour, and could have been executed by no one except himself, as, independently of the knowledge of Sanskrit which it demanded, the possession of the books themselves was not within the reach of any European save one whose position commanded the respect and whose character conciliated the confidence of the Brahmans. This essay is still the only authority available for information respecting the oldest and most important religious writings of the Hindus.' So wrote Horace Hayman Wilson in 1837. The importance of Colebrooke's essay and his other papers was increased by their opportuneness. There was at the time when he wrote a considerable, and not unnatural, distrust of Indian scholarship. The first leaders of Hindu discovery, among whom the brilliant but imaginative Sir William Jones held the first place, were very much in the hands of their pundits ; and engrossed by theories of correspondence between Hindu and other civilisations, they sought out points of relation and comparison, which their pundits were only too ready to supply out of their own imaginations, or from comparatively modern books, or even from downright forgeries. Sir William Jones, despite his real and sterling qualities of mind, was absolutely incapable of reining in his imagination, and he set up theories which had positively nothing authoritative to rest upon. Indian scholarship began to be regarded with suspicion ; men of learning in other studies ventured to doubt the existence of the Vedas, as ancient writings, and to agree with Dugald Stewart, that Sanskrit might after all be a mere invention of the Brahmans a literary
