HALHED, NATHANIEL BRASSEY Eng lish Orientalist and philologist, was born at Westminster on May 25, 1751. He was educated at Harrow, where he began his intimacy with R. B. Sheridan, continued after he entered Christ Church, Oxford, where, also, he made the acquaintance of Sir William Jones, the famous Orientalist, who induced him to study Arabic. Halhed went out to India as a writer under the East India Company, and here, at the suggestion of Warren Hastings, by whose orders it had been compiled, translated the Gentoo code from a Persian version of the original Sanskrit. This translation was published in 1776 under the title A Code of Gentoo Laws. In 1778 he published a Bengali grammar, to print which he set up, at Hugli, the first press in India. It is claimed for him that he was the first writer to call attention to the philological connection of Sanskrit with Persian, Arabic, Greek and Latin. In 1785 he returned to England, and from 179o-1795 was M.P. for Lyming ton, Hants. A speech in parliament in defence of Richard Brothers (q.v.), made it necessary for him to leave the House. He died in London Feb. 18, 183o. His collection of Oriental manu scripts was purchased by the British Museum, and there is an unfinished translation by him of the Ma/iabhdrata in the library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.