In 1802 peace meant the territory reverted to its status as the Dutch Cape Colony, and the family returned to London.
There his sister Margaret (died 1822) joined the family household at Calcutta: she had been in Bengal for a year, with John's elder brother Robert, also a surgeon.
[6] In 1825 Tytler, after a promotion, was attached as surgeon to the 20th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, and in 1826 joined the unit at Barrackpore.
[7] At Patna, through the senior magistrate Henry Douglas, he met Dewan Khan Ji (also Divan Kanhji), who had compiled a Persian work Khazanat ul Ilm covering European mathematics.
[2][8] At the end of his life, he also came into contact, via a Muslim scholar in the service of the son of Mitrajit Singh of the Tekari Raj, with another mathematical manuscript in Persian.
[17] Administratively, the Bengal Presidency's educational policy was in the hands of the General Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI), set up in 1823.
[18] By 1834, the tide seemed to be turning against the orientalists, with Tytler writing to Horace Hayman Wilson that the government line appeared to be that Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit were not of practical use.
[20] In April of that year, Trevelyan leading the Anglicists on the GCPI proposed that the Calcutta Madrasa should only admit students who would study English as well as Arabic.
[23] Bentinck's objective was simpler and cheaper administration, that avoided the use of Persian, and on the advice of Samuel Ford Whittingham he had allowed Macaulay to take the public lead on the education issue.
[24] The Native Medical Institution was closed down, as Tytler learned shortly before leaving on a planned journey to the Cape of Good Hope.
[2] On the GCPI, James Charles Colebrooke Sutherland, identified as "orientalist", had joined those condemning Tytler's teaching style, and H. T. Prinsep did not pursue an absolute line in favour of Arabic and Sanskrit; while Henry Shakespear had supported John Russell Colvin's view that English should be compulsory in the Madrasa.
[31] A lengthy obituary notice appeared in the May 1837 issue of the Asiatic Journal; it was unsigned, but it is known that the author was Horace Hayman Wilson.
[32] The education debate was brought to a compromise resolution by Lord Auckland, Governor-General of India in the later 1830s, in which translations of European science played a basic role.