James Tod

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For the Lower Canada seigneur and politician, see James Tod (seigneur).

Lieutenant-Colonel^[1] James Tod (1782-1835), British officer and Oriental scholar, was born on March 20 1782, and went to India as a cadet in the Bengal army in 1799. He commanded the escort attached to the resident with Sindhia from 1812 to 1817. In the latter year he was in charge of the Intelligence Department which largely contributed to break up the Maratha Confederacy in the Third Anglo-Maratha War, and was of great assistance in the campaign in Rajputana. In 1818 he was appointed political agent for the states of western Rajputana, where he conciliated the chieftains, settled their mutual feuds, and collected materials for his Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (2 volumes, 1829-1832), which detailed the contemporary geography and history of Rajputana and central India along with the history of the Rajput Tribes who were the rulers of the majority of the area at that time. Another book, Travels in Western India (1839), was published posthumously. He returned to England in 1823.

An amateur numismatist, Tod is known for having discovered the first specimens of Bactrian and Indo-Greek coins from the Hellenistic period following the conquests of Alexander the Great, which were described in his books. These ancient kingdoms had been largely forgotten or considered semi-legendary by posterity, but Tod's findings − the coins have since been found in vast quantities and are highly renowned for their artistic qualities − confirmed the long term Greek presence in Afghanistan and Punjab.