ABSTRACT
Knowledge, knowledge and more knowledge-such was Jones's unceasing quest. 'It is my ambition: he wrote to Lord Althorp on August 17, 1787, 'to know India better than any other European ever knew it'; and a week later, 'This then is my rule: I hold every day lost, in which I acquire no new knowledge of man or nature'; adding, 'Instead of carrying my knowledge to market, I will publish all my new works here for the effectual relief of the Insolvent Debtors in our prison: they may want virtue, but they certainly want freedom; and that is a title to my services.' This was the purpose which inspired his edition of the Laila Majniin of Hatifi in 1788, as he states in its preface: 'I think it necessary to declare, that the property of the whole impression belongs from this moment to the attorney for the poor in the Supreme Court, in trust for the miserable persons under execution for debt in the prison of Calcutta: Simon Ockley must surely have smiled down from the Elysian fields upon Jones's inspired philanthropy.
