forgotten texts. His study of Sanskrit with Pandit Ramlochan at Nadiya led him to posit the existence of the Indo-European family of languages. Many distinguished scholars, English and Bengali, such as Henry Thomas Colebrooke, James Prinsep and Pandit Radhakanta Sarman would grace the society's meetings and publications over the following century, vastly enriching knowledge of India's culture and past. Calcutta saw the establishment of several different Western-style higher education institutions this period, including Sanskrit College (1824), Calcutta Medical College (1835), University of Calcutta (1857), Surendranath College (1885) and the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (1887), India's first research institute. The Baboo/Babu culture and the Bengal renaissance In the time of British India, Calcutta was "the second city of the British Empire" (after London) and was aptly renamed "City of Palaces" and the Great Eastern Hotel was regarded as the "Jewel of the East". Calcutta at that time was famous for its "Baboo culture", a mixture of English liberalism, European decadence, Mughal conservatism, and indigenous revivalism, inculcating aspects of socio-moral and political change. This culture was fostered in its wake by the Zamindari system, the Dāyabhāga system, the Hindu joint family system, the Mitākṣarā system, the Muslim Zenana system, the Protestant spirit of free capitalist enterprise, the Mughal-inspired feudal system, and the Nautch. This also fostered the Bengal Renaissance, an awakening of modern liberal thinking in 19th century Bengal, and which gradually percolated to the rest of India. Growth In 1750, Calcutta had a population of 120,000. The centre of company control over the whole of Bengal from 1757, Calcutta underwent rapid industrial growth from the 1850s, especially in the textile sector, despite the poverty of the surrounding region. Trade with other nations also grew. For example, the first U.S. merchant ship arrived in Kolkata in 1787. In fact, the U.S Consulate in Calcutta is the U.S. Department of State's second-oldest consulate and dates from 19 November 1792. Despite being almost totally destroyed by a cyclone, in which 60,000 died, on 5 October 1864, Calcutta grew, mostly in an unplanned way, in the next 150 years from 117,000 to 1,098,000 inhabitants (including suburbs), and now has a metropolitan population of approximately 14.6 million. Contribution to the independence movement of India Historically, Calcutta was the centre of activity in the early stages of the national movement of independence. Exactly a hundred years after the fall of Bengal in the Battle