presentation copy of the first legal tract printed in India

A remarkable survival of this presentation set of the first legal tract printed in India, its Persian translation a year later, and the subsequent abridgements of both. It is also the first work to have the official imprint of the Company's press in Calcutta. There is a possibility it was preceded by a small pamphlet a few months prior, but the imprint is different and does not directly mention the Company press.

In 1772 Warren Hastings established a new set of legal and revenue courts, known as the Adalat system, in attempt to centralise the courts and provide a Hindu, rather than Islamic, based legal framework. The 1772 regulations proved only partially successful and so were reformed in 1781 with the set of regulations in this present work which officially separated revenue and judicial administration. It has also been translated into Persian, which was then still the official language of northern India until the East India Company officially stopped its usage in 1837, and latterly abridged. Despite changes and eventual abolition of the Adalat system following the Rebellion of 1857, the separation of revenue and criminal courts still influences the Indian judicial system today.

The translator, William Chambers (1748-1793), was the interpreter of the Supreme Court of Bengal at Calcutta between 1775 and 1779. His elder brother Robert Chambers (1737-1803) was a renowned Judge of the Calcutta Supreme Court, becoming Chief Justice in 1789, and makes William Chambers's involvement in this important work even more natural.

First editions; 4 works in 2 vols., presentation set, 4to (30 x 24.5 cm); translator's signed inscription to first blank, uniformly bound in contemporary full calf, gilt roll to borders, edges, and turn-ins, spine in six elaborately gilt compertments, all edges gilt, a little wear with joints starting to split but still firm, headcaps of spines restored, a very good set and internally fine; [ii], 73; [iii], 116, [4]; [ii], 35; [ii], 55 pp.

Shaw (Printing in Calcutta), 8, 16, 20, 21.