Page:Biographical Sketches of Dekkan Poets.djvu/179

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
156

was thwn surveying the Nizam's dominions. This officer in a letter to Sir Alexander Johnstone, makes honorable mention of the subject of this biography, as will be seen from the following extracts of the Jetter in question: "The connection then formed with one person a native, and a bramin (the lamented V. C. Boriah, then almost a youth of the quickest genius and disposition, possessing that conciliatory turn of mind, that soon reconciled all sects and all tribes, to the course of enquiry followed in his surveys) was the first stept of my introduction into the portal of Indian knowledge devoid of any knowledge of the language myself, I owe to the happy, genius of this individual the encouragement, and the means of obtaining what I had so long sought. On the reduction of Seringapatam, not one of our people could translate from the Canarese alone; at present we ha«e translations made not only from the modern characters, but the more obscure, I had almost said obsolete characters of the Sassanums (or inscriptions) in Canarese and Tamul; besides what have been made from the Sanscrit of which in my first