In 1805, Colebrooke became President of the Court of Appeal--a high and, as it would seem, lucrative post, which made him unwilling to aspire to any other appointment. His leisure, though more limited than before, was devoted, as formerly, to his favorite studies; and in 1807 he accepted the presidency of the Asiatic Society--a post never before or after filled so worthily. He not only contributed himself several articles to the “Asiatic Researches,” published by the Society, viz., “On the Sect of Jina,” “On the Indian and Arabic Divisions of the Zodiack,” and “On the Frankincense of the Ancients;” but he encouraged also many useful literary undertakings, and threw out, among other things, an idea which has but lately been carried out, viz., a _Catalogue raisonné_ of all that is extant in Asiatic literature. His own studies became more and more concentrated on the most ancient literature of India, the Vedas, and the question of their real antiquity led him again to a more exhaustive examination of the astronomical literature of the Brahmans. In all these researches, which were necessarily of a somewhat conjectural character, Colebrooke was guided by his usual caution. Instead of attempting, for instance, a free and more or less divinatory translation of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, he began with the tedious but inevitable work of exploring the native commentaries. No one who has not seen his MSS., now preserved at the India Office, and the marginal notes with which the folios of Sâyaṇa’s commentary are covered, can form any idea of the conscientiousness with which he collected the materials for his essay. He was by no means a blind follower of Sâyaṇa, or a believer in the infallibility of traditional interpretation. The question on which so much useless ingenuity has since been expended, whether in translating the Veda we should be guided by native authorities or by the rules of critical scholarship, must have seemed to him, as to every sensible person, answered as soon as it was asked. He answered it by setting to work patiently, in order to find out, first, all that could be learnt from native scholars, and afterwards to form his own opinion. His experience as a practical man, his judicial frame of mind, his freedom from literary vanity, kept him, here as elsewhere, from falling into the pits of learned pedantry. It will seem almost incredible to later generations that German and English scholars should have wasted so much of their time in trying to prove, either that we should take no notice whatever of the traditional interpretation of the Veda, or that, in following it, we should entirely surrender our right of private judgment. Yet that is the controversy which has occupied of late years some of our best Sanskrit scholars, which has filled our journals with articles as full of learning as of acrimony, and has actually divided the students of the history of ancient religion into two hostile camps.