Henry Thomas Colebrooke

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Henry Thomas Colebrooke
A bust of Henry Thomas Colebrooke currently owned by the Royal Asiatic Society
Born	June 15 1756(1756-06-15) London, England
Died	April 10 1837 (aged 80) London, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Orientalist
Known for	Sanskrit scholar, one of the founders of the Royal Asiatic Society

Henry Thomas Colebrooke (June 15, 1765 - March 10, 1837) was an English orientalist.

Biography

Early Years

Henry Thomas Colebrooke, third son of Sir George Colebrooke, a Second Baronet, was born in London. His father was a banker and a director of the British East India Company and Chairman from 1769 to 1773. Colebrooke was educated at home; and when only fifteen he had made considerable attainments in classics and mathematics. From the age of twelve to sixteen he lived in France following the collapse of his father's finances.

Service with the East India Company

In 1782 he was appointed to a writership with the East India Company. He sailed to India in 1782. About a year after his arrival he was placed in the board of accounts in Calcutta; three years later he transferred to Tirhut as assistant collector (deputy chief administrative officer). In 1789 he was placed in charge of a survey of the resources in the Purneah district. It was there that he wrote his Remarks on the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal, privately printed in 1795, in which he advocated free trade between Great Britain and India. In 1793, he was transferred to Nator. When Sir William Jones died in 1794 he was commissioned to produce a summary of Hinduism law and moved from the revenue to the judicial branch. In 1795 he was appointed district magistrate in Mirzapur, which is near Varanasi. In March 1799 he was sent to Nagpur as a member pro tempore of the diplomatic corps to negotiate a treaty with the Rajah of Berar. He remained in Nagpur for the next two years before returning to his post at Mirzapur. Although no treaty was finalized, Colebrooke was commended for his efforts and rewarded with a seat on the new superior court of appeal in Calcutta. By 1805 he was chief justice and by 1807 he was a member of the governor-generals council serving for five years, the usual term. This was followed by a brief return to the court of appeal and membership of the board of revenue before he retired from India in 1814. He also served a term as President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, founded by Jone's in 1782. He published twenty papers in the Society's journal.

Scholarship

In 1805, Lord Wellesley, the governor-general appointed Colebrooke honorary professor of Hindu law and Sanskrit at the college of Fort William. During his residence at Calcutta he wrote his Sanskrit Grammar (1805), some papers on the religious ceremonies of the Hindus, and his Essay on the Vedas (1805), for a long time the standard work in English on the subject. This established that Buddhism post-dated Brahmanism. His work on Jainism pioneered the study of that tradition by non-Indians. He donated 2749 manuscripts to what is now the India Office Library, London. His work on Sanskrit has been described as "monument marking the beginning of the study of traditional Sanskrit linguistics (vyakarana) by non-Indians."

After returning to England, Colebrooke was instrumental in founding the Royal Asiatic Society, chairing all of its early meetings, the first of which took place in his home on January 9, 1823. He served as the first Director of the Society; he did not consider himself sufficiently distinguished to assume the Presidency, which went to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn.

Selected Works

• Henry Thomas Colebrooke. 1807. "Observations on the Sect of the Jains. Calcutta. Asiatick Researches Vol. 9. pp 287-322. Retrieved February 7, 2009.

* Henry Thomas Colebrooke, ed. (1807). Kosha, Or Dictionary of the Sanscrit Language by Umura Singha with an English Interpretation and Annotations by H.T. Colebrooke. (3rd edition, 1891). Calcutta: Haragobinda Rakshit. Retrieved February 7, 2009. 

• Henry Thomas Colebrooke. (1837). Miscellaneous Essays.Retrieved February 7, 2009. London: W.H. Allen & Company.
• Henry Thomas Colebrooke. (1858). On the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus. London: Williams & Norgate. Retrieved February 7, 2009.

Marriage

Colebrooke married Elizabeth Wilkinson in 1810. She died before Colebrooke retired from India. Of their three sons, only Sir Thomas Edward Colebrooke survived. He wrote his father's biography, The Life of H. T. Colebrooke in 1873.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Colebrooke, T. E., and H. T. Colebrooke. 1873. The life of H.T. Colebrooke. London: Trübner. OCLC 7437790
• Gombrich, Richard F. 2004. "Colebrooke, Henry Thomas." 531 in Matthew, H. C. G., and Brian Howard Harrison. Oxford dictionary of national biography: in association with the British Academy: from the earliest times to the year 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198614111.

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