Bengal Past & Present January—December 1944

The right of the Directors to make nomination for admission to the Haileybury College for appointments in the Covenanted Civil Service continued in force to the end of April 1854 although appointments to the Indian Civil Service were thrown open to competition by the Act of Parliament in 1853 when the Charter of the East India Company was renewed for the last time. [...] In the following pages is given a brief review of the literary historical scientific and miscellaneous achievements of the members of the Indian Civil Service from about the time of the assumption of the Diwani of Bengal by the East India Company in 1765. [...] He contributed numerous papers to the Asiatic Researches the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society the Transactions of the Linnean Society the Transactions of the Zoological Society and the Quarterly Journal of Science. [...] Besides publishing a translation of the Memoirs of a Pathan Soldier of Fortune the Nawab Muhammad Amir Khan (1832) he was the author of two important historical works : The Origin of the Sikh Power in the Punjab and a History of the life of Ranjit Singh. [...] He was rightly known as the "Hermit of the Himalayas" and in the words of Sir Joseph Hooker he "unveiled the mysteries of the Buddhist religion chronicled the affinities languages customs and faiths of the Himalayan tribes and completed a natural history of the animals and birds of those regions".