Arthur Coke Burnell (11 July 184012 October 1882) was an English civil servant who served in the Madras Presidency who was also a scholar in Sanskrit and Dravidian languages. He catalogued the Sanskrit manuscripts in southern India, particularly those in the collections of the Tanjore court collections. He was, with Henry Yule, a co-compiler of Hobson-Jobson, a compendium of Anglo-Indian terms. Life Burnell was born at St. Briavels, Gloucestershire, the first son of Arthur Burnell who worked in the East India Company and Mary Agnes, née Coke. A grand-uncle was William Coke. He was educated at Bedford School, and then went to King's College, London, where a meeting with Professor Viggo Fausböll of Copenhagen led him to an early interest in Indology. He took the examination for the Indian Civil Services in 1857 and after studies in Sanskrit from Theodor Goldstücker and Telugu went to take up a post in the Madras Presidency in 1860. In the course of positions across peninsular India, he began to acquire or copy Sanskrit manuscripts. Poor health made his return to England and he published Catalogue of a Collection of Sanskrit MSS (1869) in England. He returned to India to serve as a judge in Mangalore and then Tanjore. Among his significant contributions was the deciphering of the Pahlavi inscription at St Thomas Mount which made him date it to the 8th century AD. In 1875 Edward Lear visited Burnell (noted as "Burnall") in Tanjore and in 1876 he visited Java and met Miss Marianne North who had been referred to him by Lear, inviting her to Tanjore the next year. Burnell himself took an interest in Indian trees and collected many sacred plants for North. His constitution, never strong, broke down several times. He suffered cholera, and partial paralysis. Towards the end of his life he lived in San Remo and travelled across northern Italy. He returned to England in 1882 and died at his brother's home in West Stratton, Hampshire. He was buried in the churchyard of Micheldever. A collection of Sanskrit manuscripts was purchased from his heirs by the India Office library after his death. Works In 1874, Burnell published a Handbook of South Indian Palaeography, characterized by Max Müller as "an avenue through one of the thickest and darkest jungles of Indian archaeology, and is so full of documentary evidence, that it will long remain indispensable to every student of