published it as a book in mid-August of the same year. In it, Hunter concluded that the majority of the Indian Muslim scholars rejected the idea of rebelling against the Government because of their opinion that the condition for religious war, i.e. the absence of protection and liberty between Muslims and infidel rulers, did not exist in British India; and that "there is no jihad in a country where protection is afforded". In 1872 Hunter published his history of Orissa. The third International Sanitary Conference held at Constantinople in 1866 declared Hindu and Muslim pilgrimages to be 'the most powerful of all the causes which conduce to the development and propagation of Cholera epidemics'. Hunter echoing the view described the 'squalid pilgrim army of Jagannath' as He embarked on a series of tours throughout the country, and he supervised the A Statistical Account of Bengal (20 volumes, 1875–1877) and a similar work for Assam (2 volumes, 1879). Hunter wrote that The statistical accounts, covering the 240 administrative districts, comprised 128 volumes and these were condensed into the nine volumes of The Imperial Gazetteer of India, which was published in 1881. The Gazetteer was revised in later series, the second edition comprising 14 volumes published between 1885 and 1887, while the third comprised 26 volumes, including an atlas, and was published in 1908 under the editorship of Herbert Hope Risley, William Stevenson Meyer, Richard Burn and James Sutherland Cotton. Again according to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Hunter "adopted a transliteration of vernacular place-names, by which means the correct pronunciation is ordinarily indicated; but hardly sufficient allowance was made for old spellings consecrated by history and long usage." Hunter's own article on India was published in 1880 as A Brief History of the Indian Peoples, and has been widely translated and utilized in Indian schools. A revised form was issued in 1895, under the title of The Indian Empire: its People, History and Products. Hunter later said that Hunter contributed the articles "Bombay", "Calcutta", "Dacca", "Delhi" and "Mysore" to the 9th edition (1875–89) of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 1882 Hunter, as a member of the governor-general's council, presided over the Commission on Indian Education; in 1886 he was elected vice-chancellor of the University of Calcutta. In 1887 he retired from the service, was created KCSI, and settled at Oaken Holt, near Oxford. He was on the governing body of Abingdon School