John Richard’s dictionary was first published from 1777 to 1780 for employees of the East India company.

Richardson was a Scottish orientalist who embarked on the project to update Franciscus Meninski's Thesaurus linguarum orientalium (1680–87) with William Jones, but the latter subsequently withdrew from the time-consuming endeavour. Charles Wilkins, then Librarian at East India House, published this revised version in 1806, enlarging the dictionary by almost 20,000 words and incorporating Willmet's Arabic Lexicon (1784).