John Gilchrist was a surgeon in the Bengal Army of the East India Company. He argued that teaching Hindustani, the vernacular language of North India, to Company employees was more useful than Persian, the language of bureaucracy and high culture. In 1787 he compiled a Hindustani grammar and this two-volume dictionary and later became the first professor of Hindustani at the newly established College of Fort William in Calcutta.

This dictionary was from the library of Prince Augustus, Duke of Sussex, assembled at Kensington Palace, containing around 50,000 books and manuscripts. In 1844, after his death, the library was sold at auction by Messrs. Evans.