Vincent Arthur Smith CIE (3 June 1843 – 6 February 1920) was an Irish Indologist, historian, member of the Indian Civil Service, and curator.
[2] In the 1890s, he was key to exposing the forgeries of Alois Anton Führer, then working for the Archaeological Survey of India, who Smith caught in the act of making fake inscriptions.
[1] After graduating from Trinity College Dublin, he passed the final examination for the Indian Civil Service in 1871, at "the head of the list", and served in what is now Uttar Pradesh until 1900, in the regular ICS roles, rising to the post of Chief Secretary to the government in 1898, becoming a Commissioner the same year.
Throughout this period he was a prolific writer on Indian history, and finally left the service early to devote more time to this, in 1900, returning to England.
[1] Moving first to Cheltenham, by 1910 Smith was settled in Oxford where he joined St John's College and was appointed a Curator of the Indian Institute.