SINGH, Jawahir.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A Vocabulary of Two Thousand Words from English into Panjabi. First edition of this rarity, the first English-Punjabi dictionary compiled by a Sikh. Just two locations traced, BL and Oxford, the 1899 second edition is held by BL only. The author, described on the title page as Royal Horse Artillery munshi at Umballa (Ambala), was evidently in great demand with other regiments at the garrison, the last nine pages carry glowing testimonials as to his abilities as a teacher.Jawahir Singh was a prolific author of language guides in Punjabi, Urdu, Persian, and Pashto for soldiers cramming for their Lower or Higher Standard exams. This copy with the ownership inscription of "William McGregor Ross, Kikuyu, East Africa Protectorate, July 21st 1903". Ross was "a civil engineer, who came to BEA in 1900 to work as an assistant engineer on the Uganda Railway. He was Engineer-in-Charge of the Nairobi Water supply from 1903. By the following year, at the age of 28, he had risen to become Director of Public Works, but was forced to resign in 1923 after agitation from settlers over his alleged mismanagement of public funds. McGregor Ross's face had never fitted the colonial scene. He was fiercely teetotal, moralistic, bookish, aloof from clubhouse camaraderie, and seen as a bit of a prig... he became more and more anti-settler, forced to listen to 'the crude, crass clamour of self-interest'" (Hughes, p.20). At the time that he took over as Director there were ten Indians on his staff in tech

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