John Faithfull Fleet

His research in Indian epigraphy and history, conducted in India over a thirty-year period, is published in books including Pali, Sanskrit and Old Canarese Inscriptions, The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of The Bombay Presidency from the earliest historical times to the Musalman Conquest, and The Inscriptions of The Early Gupta Kings and their Successors.

His published well-regarded works on inscriptions in the Sanskrit, Pali and Kannada languages and on the history of dynasties such as the Guptas, Kadambas, Aulikaras, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas and Seunas.

Fleet was appointed to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) in the year 1865, and to prepare himself for this, he studied Sanskrit at University College London.

The Inscriptions of The Early Gupta Kings and their Successors (1889), forming the third volume of the Corpus Inscriptionarum Indicum, was a well-regarded example of his scholarship.

The work deals with a number of dynasties, from the Kadambas, Gangas of Orissa and Karnataka, and Latas, to the Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, and Seunas.

He was now able to devote his full time to his epigraphical studies and continued with his valuable contributions to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and Epigraphia Indica.

John Faithfull Fleet 1912
English translation of the Allahabad inscription of Samudragupta , by John Faithfull Fleet, circa 1888.