Hunter, SIR WILLIAM WILSON

Hunter, SIR WILLIAM WILSON, statistician, was born on 15th July 1840, educated at the universities of Glasgow, Paris, and Bonn, and in 1862 entered the civil service of India. His first important office, that of superintendent of public instruction in Orissa (1866-69), gave him the opportunity to write Annals of Rural Bengal (1868) and Comparative Dictionary of the Non-Aryan Languages of India and High Asia (1868). Then, after filling the responsible offices of secretary to the government of Bengal and the supreme government of India, he was in 1871 appointed director-general of the statistical department of India. The Indian census of 1872 was his first work in his new position. His later books include the compendious Imperial Gazetteer of India (9 vols. 1881; 14 vols. 1886-88), Orissa (1872), Life of Lord Mayo (2d ed. 1876), Statistical Account of Assam (1880), Famine Aspects of Bengal Districts (1874), Indian Mussulmans (1871; 3d ed. 1876), The Indian Empire (2d ed. 1886). He received the Star of India in 1878, and in 1887 was knighted. In 1890-96 he edited a series of Lives of 'Rulers of India,' to which he himself contributed Dalhousie. The Old Missionary (1895) is a touching story of Indian life. He died at Oaken Holt Hall, Oxford, 7th February 1900.