Charles Bruce (governor)

Sir Charles Bruce GCMG JP (1836 – 13 December 1920) was a British colonial administrator and author. He was the 18th Governor of Mauritius, from 1897 to 1903.

Charles Bruce was born in India in 1836, the son of Thomas Bruce, of Arnott, Kinross-shire, who worked for many years for the Honourable East India Company. His father was a descendant of the 9th Earl of Home. Young Charles was educated at Harrow and Yale University. In early life he went to Germany, and devoted himself to the study of Oriental language and literature, mainly Sanskrit and Zend-Pahlavi. He assisted in preliminary work for the Great Sandskrit Dictionary by Otto von Böhtlingk and Rudolf von Roth (Sanskrit Wörterbuch, 7 vols., 1855–75), published by the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. It was through this connection he was able to get the academy to publish his work Die Geschichte von Nala (1862), an attempt to restore the original text of an episode in the Indian epic, the Mahabharata. While serving as a librarian at the British Museum, he was in 1865 elected Professor of Sanskrit at King's College, Cambridge.

Bruce left for Mauritius in 1868, to take up position as Rector of the Royal College in Port Louis. He held this post for 10 years, until he transferred to Ceylon in 1878 to become Director of Public Instruction. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1881 Birthday Honours for his service during his years in Ceylon. By 1882 he was back in Mauritius as Colonial Secretary, but left for British Guiana in 1885 to become Lieutenant-Governor. He continued as such until 1893, during which he was three times Acting Governor, and in 1889 was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG).

...
Wikipedia