The British colonial period saw standardisation of Marathi grammar through the efforts of the Christian missionary William Carey.Carey also published the first dictionary of Marathi in Devanagari script. The most comprehensive Marathi-English dictionary was compiled by Captain James Thomas Molesworth and Major Thomas Candy in 1831. The book is still in print nearly two centuries after its publication. Molesworth also worked on standardizing Marathi.He used Brahmins of Pune for this task and adopted the Sanskrit dominated dialect spoken by this caste in the city as the standard dialect for Marathi. Introduction of printing, standardization of Marathi, and establishment of modern schools and colleges during the early colonial era led to spread of literacy and knowledge to many different sections of society such as women, the dalits and the cultivator classes.