Philip Meadows Taylor

Colonel Philip Meadows Taylor CSI, an Anglo-Indian administrator and novelist, was born in Liverpool, England. At the age of fifteen he was sent out to India to become a clerk to a Bombay merchant. The merchant was in financial difficulties, though. In 1824, Taylor gladly accepted a commission in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad, to which service he remained devotedly attached throughout his long career. He was speedily transferred from military duty to a civil appointment, and in this capacity he acquired a knowledge of the languages and the people of southern India which has seldom been equalled.He studied the laws, geology, and the antiquities of the country, being one of the foremost early experts on megaliths. He was alternately judge, engineer, artist, and man of letters. [Wikipedia]