James Grant Duff - Return To Scotland

Return To Scotland

After five years the anxiety and toil broke down his health, and compelled his return to Scotland, where he occupied himself in completing his History of the Mahrattas, the materials for which he had long been collecting with great diligence and under peculiarly favourable opportunities, through his access to state papers, and family and temple archives, and his personal acquaintance with the Mahratta chiefs (see in Colebrooke, Life of Elphinstone, several letters to and from Grant). It was published in 1826 and was translated into the major languages of Western India and made required reading for Indian students during the British Raj. About 1825 he succeeded to the estate of Eden, and taking the additional name of Duff settled there, improving the property. In 1850 his wife, Jane Catharine Ainslie (only daughter of Sir Whitelaw Ainslie, an eminent physician and author of the Materia Medica Indica), whom he married in 1825, succeeded to an estate in Fifeshire belonging to her mother"s family, whereupon he took the further name of Cuninghame.