TAYLOR, PHILIP MEADOWS (18081876)

This article appears in Volume V26, Page 472 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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TAYLOR, PHILIP MEADOWS (18081876) , Anglo-Indian administrator and novelist, was born at Liverpool on the 25th of September 18o8.- At the age of fifteen he was sent out to India to become a clerk to a Bombay merchant. On his arrival the

house

HOUSE
HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
Gothic
- GOTHIC
it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)

was in

financial

FINANCIAL

difficulties, and he was glad to accept In 1824 a commission in the service of his highness the nizam, to which service he remained devotedly attached throughout his long career. He was speedily transferred from military duty to a civil appointment, and in this capacity he acquired a knowledge of the languages and the people of Southern Indiawhich has seldom been equalled. He studied the laws, the geology, the antiquities of the country; he was alternately judge, engineer, artist and man of letters, for on his return to England in 1840 on furlough he published the first of his Indian novels, Confesssions of a Thug, in which he reproduced, with singular vivacity and truth, the scenes which he had heard described by the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

actors in them. This book was followed by a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of tales, Tippoo Sultaun (184o), Tara (1863), Ralph Darnell (1865), Seeta (1872), and A Noble Queen (1878), all illustrating periods of Indian history and society, and giving a prominent place to the native character, for which and the native institutions and traditions he had a

great

GREAT

regard and respect. Returning to India he acted from 184o to 1853 as correspondent for The Times. He also wrote a Student's

Manual

MANUAL

of the History of India (187o). About 185o, Meadows Taylor was appointed by the nizam's government to administer, during a long minority, the principality of the

young

raja of Shorapore. He succeeded without any European assistance in raising this small territory to a high degree of prosperity, and such was his influence with the natives that on the occurrence of the mutiny in Bengal he held his ground without military support. Colonel Taylor, whose merits were now recognized and acknowledged by the British government of Indiaalthough he had never been in the service of the Companywas subsequently appointed to the deputy

commissioner

COMMISSIONER

-ship of the Western ceded districts, where he succeeded in establishing a new

assessment

ASSESSMENT, (from Lat. assessare, to sit beside, to judge)

of revenues at once more equitable to the cultivators and more productive to the government. By indefatigable perseverance he had raised himself from the condition of a half-educated lad, without patronage, and without even the support of the Company, to the successful government of some of the most important provinces of India, 36,000 square miles in extent and with a population of more than five millions. On his retirement from service in 186o he was, made a C.S.I. and given a pension. Taylor died at Mentone on the 13th of May 1876.
See Meadows Taylor's The Story of My Life (1877).

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