"Halhed's fame rests on the productions of the years 1772 8, which he spent in Bengal, where his superior education and knowledge of Persian, acquired in Oxford at the example of his friend William Jones and perfected in Cossimbazar, attracted the governor's notice. Warren Hastings chose him to translate the crowning piece of his orientalist policy, a code of laws commissioned from a committee of pandits which was to serve as a basis for the administration of civil justice to Hindus. Halhed's translation of a Persian abstract of the Sanskrit text was rushed to London in instalments to stave off the feared imposition of British laws on the company's Indian subjects, and, at Hastings's request, was published by the East India Company to much attention (A Code of Gentoo Laws, 1776; further edns, 1777, 1781; French and German trans., 1778). Its learned preface describing Sanskrit, claiming a high antiquity for Hindu civilization, and challenging biblical chronology elicited enthusiasm with some, but condemnation from others such as the Revd George Costard" Published by London: 1781