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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(JUNE, 1917
JOHN FAITHFULL FLEET.
BY L. D. BARNETT. INDIAN STUDENTS have suffered a grievous loss by the death of Dr. J. F. Fleet, C.I.E., which took place on the 21st February last. He had been for some time past in enfeebled health, suffering especially from an affection of the lungs; but he maintained his interest in his favourite studies until a few weeks before his death. His departure is deeply mourned by all who have known him; and the sorrow of his friends in England will be equally shared by those in the Presidency of Bombay, for it was there that he spunt most of the thirty years of his duty as an official of the Indian Civil Service, happy years of vigorous youth and manhood spent in faithful work for the welfare of the Indian people and for the advancement of the studies in which he was the acknowledged master. Often in his later years he used to speak with tenderness and admiration of his old friends. the Kanarese peasantry, and recall the days that he had spent among them, listening after office hours to their tales and recording their ballads. A capable and wise administrator, as well as a profound and successful investigator of scientific truth, he leaves behind him a record of work supremely well done.
John Faithfull Fleet, the son of John George Fleet, of Chiswick, and his wife Esther Faithfull, was born in 1847, and educated in London at the Merchant Taylor's Sohool. In 1865 he was appointed to the Indian Civil Service, and in preparation for his work in India studied at University College, London, among other things learning Sanskrit from Theodor Goldstücker. He arrived in Bombay in 1867, and entered the Revenue and Executive Branch of the Service. His official career may be briefly summarised. He became successively Assistant Collector and Magistrate, Educational Inspector for the Southern Division (1872), Assistant Political Agent in Kolhapur and the Southern Maratha Country (1875). Epigraphist to the Government of India (1883), Junior Collector, Magistrate, and Political Agent at Sholapur (1886), Senior Collector (1889), Commissioner of the Southern and Central Divisions (1891-1892), and Commissioner of Customs (1893) : he retired in 1897. With his official work his scientific and literary studies went hand in hand. He applied himself at once to the investigation of the epigraphic records of the Bombay Presidency, and speedily proved himself to be possessed of all the qualities needful for this work. His mind was vigorous, exact, and acute, his judgment sober and judicious; he had a deep and accurate knowledge of the Sanskrit and Kanarese languages and literatures, and of astronomy and epigraphy; and he handled details with consummate mastery. His early papers in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society already showed these qualities, and marked him as a coming leader of epigraphio and historical studies. From its foundation in 1872 onwards he took a keen interest in the Indian Antiquary; he was its joint editor with Sir Richard Carneo Temple from volume XIV to volume XX, and many of his most valuable papers appeared in it. He published for the India Office in 1878 his "Pali.. Sanskrit anaoua. Canarese Inscriptions," a useful and scholarly collection, which however was eclipsed in 1888 by his Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and their Successors," forming volume III of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, & splendid piece of work from every point of view, which by establishing the epoch of the Gupta dynasty in A. D. 319-320 laid the key-stone of Indian chronology. Another very valuable work was his "Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts in the Bombay Presidency," which was published in 1895 as volume I, Part I, of the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency; in this he put together in orderly arrangement the vast amount of data collected by him from epigraphic and literary sources which bear on the history of those ancient kingdoms. After his return to England he devoted himself with characteristic energy to his favourite studies. He became in 1907
