He returned to his post at Kermanshah for the winter of 1836-7, and once more directed his attention to the inscriptions at Behistun. During all this period he continued to be practically the governor of the extensive province of Kermanshah and the commander of a large portion of the army stationed in it. In the summer of 1837, he was relieved of these duties, and received a mark of the Shah’s favour by being appointed Custodian of the Arsenal of Teheran. He passed that winter (1837-8) in the capital, and when the British Envoy, Sir J. McNeill, accompanied the army of the Shah to Herat, he found himself left in ‘quasi political charge.’ Soon afterwards, the progress of political events led to the withdrawal of the Mission from Persia, and Rawlinson found himself at Bagdad towards the close of the year 1838, where he remained till October 1839. While at Kermanshah (1835-7) he was able to make a nearly correct transcript of the entire first column of the Persian text, together with the opening paragraph of the second, ten paragraphs of the third column and four of the detached inscriptions, amounting altogether to two hundred lines, or one half of the whole inscription.[162] The outbreak of the Afghan war, in 1839, summoned him to a very different sphere of activity. He was recalled to Bombay in October of that year, and in January 1840, he was ordered to Candahar, where he filled the important office of Political Agent throughout the whole of that trying period. It was due in a measure to his energy and prudence, acting in combination with the military talent of General Nott, that the town was saved, and a portion of the disaster at Kabul retrieved. The evacuation of Candahar took place in August 1842, and by the end of the year Rawlinson was back in India. He had been present at three battles and on each occasion was honourably mentioned in despatches; in addition to these services, he accompanied the General as aide-de-camp during the hard fighting on the march to Cabul and the Sutlej. An accidental meeting on board a steamer with Lord Ellenborough, who was then the Governor-General, ripened into friendship, and procured for the young officer an offer of the ‘Residency in Nepaul’ or of ‘the Central India Agency’; but these were declined. Rawlinson had set his heart on completing his cuneiform studies, which had now been suspended by three years of adventure; and although these appointments were of much greater dignity and emolument, he eagerly seized upon the opportunity of returning to Bagdad as ‘Political Agent in Turkish Arabia,’ in succession to Colonel Taylor. Here he arrived in December, 1843, to ‘work out the Babylonian puzzle’ and to spend ‘twelve weary years of his life doing penance in order to attain a great literary object.’[163]