between December 1895 and July 1898, during which period he was Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces and Berar. He had been appointed a Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI) in June 1893 and then, in June 1897, he was gazetted in the Diamond Jubilee Honours list as a Knight Commander of the same Order. Upon his return to England, Lyall was transferred to the India Office in London as secretary to the Judicial and Public Department. He held that post until his retirement in 1910. Lyall died at his home in Cornwall Gardens, London, on 1 September 1920 and was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery. He had married Florence, a daughter of Captain Henry Fraser of Calcutta, in 1870 and the couple had two sons and five daughters. Scholarship In his leisure time Lyall was known as a scholar of various Eastern languages. He had demonstrated a gift for Hebrew while at university and he went on to learn Arabic, Hindustani and Persian, as well as sufficient of what was then called the Mikir language to enable him to translate some folktales that had been collected by Edward Stack. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that he was "one of Britain's foremost scholars of Eastern languages" and that He published the two-volume Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry (1885, 1894), and translations of The Diwan of Abid ibn al-Abras (1913), The Poems of Amr Son of Qamiah (1919), and The Mufaddaliyat (1921), as well as articles on Hindustani and Arabic literature. Some of the latter were published in the ninth and eleventh editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Lyall was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, of the University of Calcutta and of King's College, London, as well as being a vice-president of the Royal Asiatic Society and an official representative of the government of India at various international oriental congresses between 1899 and 1908. He was President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1894 and an honorary member both of that and of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft. He also received honorary degrees from the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford and Strasbourg. He assisted in the foundation of the London School of Oriental Studies. Publications The following list is not exhaustive. Lyall contributed papers to many journals. (Co-authored with A. S. Lethbridge) ("Edited, arranged and supplemented" by Lyall) (Edited by Lyall) (Edited by Lyall) (Edited