John Staples Harriott
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John Staples Harriott (1780–1839)[1] was a British army officer stationed in India, in the service of the East India Company. He came to acquire the Jami' al-tawarikh in its original manuscript. In his studies of the Roma people, he made an identification with a legend of Bahram Gur and the Luri to support a Romani presence in Sasanid Persia, now considered to be an unjustified and uncritical deduction that has persisted.[2]
He was a son of John Harriott. In 1796 he became a cadet with the East India Company, and became a lieutenant in the Bengal Presidency in 1798, captain in 1806, and major in 1817; lieutenant-colonel in 1823 and colonel in 1829. In 1803 he lost a leg at the Battle of Delhi, serving under Lord Lake.[3][4][5] He lived much of his life in Calcutta,[6] and ultimately reached the rank of Major General.[7]
In 1819–20 Harriott was collecting Romani vocabulary in Hampshire, England.[8] Some of his results were read to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1822.[9] In 1830 a membership list for the Royal Asiatic Society gives his address as Mortlake.[10]
