India
Training continued at the college at Fort St. George in Madras where he excelled in languages, winning an award of 1000 pagodas for his proficiency in Tamil and Urdu. He continued to learn other languages such as Marathi, Arabic, Persian and Telugu. For two hears he worked as an assistant to the collector of Salem district. He then used his influence with Sir Thomas Munro and Mountstuart Elphinstone to enable his transfer into the newly acquired territory of southern Maratha district. In 1824 he was part of the Kittur insurrection, a move to take over a territory then under the control of Kittur Chennamma. He was taken prisoner although his superior, St. John Thackeray the political agent of Dharwar (an uncle of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray) was killed. Elliot and an assistant Stevenson were held in imprisonment for six weeks. They received a kind treatment from their captors and it was during this period that he learnt about Hindu ideas of kinship, caste and custom. The southern Maratha district was subsequently moved from the control of the Madras to the Bombay Presidency but he was allowed to stay on by the governor of Bombay, Sir John Malcolm. During this he gained a reputation as an adventurer, historian, big-game hunter and linguist.
Read more about this topic: Walter Elliot (Scottish Naturalist)
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