John Faithfull Fleet

John Faithfull Fleet C.I.E (1847 – 21 February 1917) was an English civil servant with the Indian Civil Services and became known as a historian, epigraphist and linguist. His research in Indian epigraphy and history, conducted in India over a thirty-year period, is published in books including "Pali, Sanskrit and Old Canarese Inscriptions", "The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of The Bombay Presidency from the earliest historical times to the Musalman Conquest", and "The Inscriptions of The Early Gupta Kings and their Successors". He was a regular contributor to works journals covering Indian history. His published well-regarded works on inscriptions in the Sanskrit, Pali and Kannada languages and on the history of dynasties such as the Guptas, Kadambas, Aulikaras, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas and Seunas.

Fleet was born to John George Fleet, a London wholesale sugar dealer and Esther Faithfull of Headley, Surrey, England, in 1847. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School in London. His five brothers included Vice-Admiral Herbert Cecil Fleet (born 1851-date of death unknown), Rutland Barrington (1853–1922) a star in Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and actor Duncan Fleet (born 1860, date of death unknown). He also had two sisters. His aunt Emily Faithfull was an activist and dramatic reader.

Fleet was appointed to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) in the year 1865, and to prepare himself for this he studied Sanskrit at University College London. In 1867, he moved to the Bombay Presidency (then a British province in western India) and soon held the posts of Assistant Collector and then Magistrate, Educational Inspector, in the Southern Division (1872), Assistant Political Agent in Kolhapur and the Southern Maratha Country (1875), and Collector and Magistrate (1882).

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