Archives de la Province de France de la Compagnie de Jésus

If you're doing research on 18th century India, chances are good you've run across the names of one or two Jesuit priests. They appear in the landscape of southern India with especial frequency, but also toward the north/central region (there was a Jesuit church and college at Agra, for instance). An incredibly curious set of religious folk, the Jesuits took notes on just about everything they saw: language, religion, family, geography, science, trade, travel, etc. We know they were curious, because they wrote letters with unbelievable frequency when they were out on mission, describing the world as they encountered it.

Fortunately, many of the letters written back to Europe from India, China, the Americas and Africa were preserved by the recipient (usually a priest in a higher position). In the eighteenth century, 34 volumes worth of letters were edited and published by the Society of Jesuits under the title Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (you can read a brief summary of the series at Wikipedia, of all places). It takes time to sort out the various editions and publication dates for the volumes, especially if you're trying to do it through interlibrary loan, but I think it's worth it. I've been using the 1781 edition (occasionally reading the 1819 edition for newer punctuation and spellings) because that takes me well beyond the end date for my project (1743).

Unfortunately, even with 34 volumes, the collection doesn't include every letter ever written by every Jesuit priest in the world. That's where the Jesuit Archives in Vanves (Paris) come in handy. I've just started working here, and can I say, this is a really great research experience. Aside from my inability to use the doorbell properly, it's been very painless, even with my abominably poor French (I read it much better than I speak it, obviously). Le Père Archiviste, Robert Bonfils, is friendly and helpful. He speaks perfect English and didn't make me feel stupid for lacking the same fluency with his own language.

Today I looked at two volumes of the Fonds Brotiers, reading letters from various Jesuits interested in astronomy in India and China. These letters nicely fill in the gaps left in the Lettres édifiantes. I think I took the right approach--spent quite a bit of time with the published letters, worked out a timeline and familiarized myself with names and personalities, and then went to the archive. The names I'm reading are all familar to me, and I've read published letters by all of them. This has been surprisingly helpful when I'm trying to decipher complex handwriting.

Practicalities: I had a native French speaker translate my letter of introduction into French for me, but I'm not sure that is necessary. At any rate, you can contact the archivist at:

Archives de la Province de France de la Compagnie de Jésus
15 rue Raymond Marcheron
92170 VANVES
France

Contacting Mr. Bonfils ahead of time helped me discover that a citation reproduced a hundred times over in the secondary literature on my subject was incorrect.

The archive opens at 9 a.m., and is closed for lunch from 12:00-1:30, which will give you plenty of time for a nice lunch.

Unlike the British Library, this archive permits the use of a camera, useful for taking images of fragile documents.

There are two Citéa hotels within a two-minute walk of the archive. I can say that Citéa Vanves Porte de Châtillon is clean and comfortable (it looks exactly as the website promises), and it takes me 45 seconds to walk from the front door of the hotel to gate of the archive, 4-5 minutes to walk to the grocery store, and 9-10 minutes to walk to the metro. So, convenient, and inexpensive at Euro65/night.

Foreign Language Journals at RIBA

If you are studying in a School of Architecture as I am, you probably have access to a decent Architecture Library. Still, it is worth spending some time over at the RIBA British Architectural Library if you are doing research on Central (West) Asia or Northern India. For instance, if you wanted to read an archaeological report from Аркитектцра СССР at home, you would probably need to go through interlibrary loan to acquire it. At RIBA, you can sit and browse through back issues to your heart's content. Ditto for the even more obscure Аркитектура и Строительство Узбекистана. By the end of my first day there, I had articles from Architecture Australia, Parametro, Perspecta, Aujourd'hui Art et Architecture, Architectural Review, Domus, Bauwelt, and Archaeologia. Some of those are easily available in the U.S., but being able to simply sit and browse the others made the trip to that part of town worth the time.

Persian Manuscripts 101

If you are completely new to working with Persian manuscripts at the British Library, here are a few tips for the novice. Hopefully it will save you a few steps when you are trying to find a manuscript from a weak citation. Instead of saying to the reference librarian on duty in the Asia and African Studies Reading Room "Uh...I have a number for a Persian manuscript and I don't know to find it," you can instead say, "Uh...I have a number for a Persian manuscript, and it's not in Ethe or Rieu, and I don't know how to find it." [Truthfully, that statement didn't save me a few steps when I was looking for a manuscript with a D.P. shelfmark, but more on that below.]

First, the new version of the British Library website describes its finding aids for Persian manuscripts clearly but briefly. I will just highlight a few of these and tell you how I have found them useful.

Of the basic finding aids for Persian manuscripts, some are aimed specifically at the mss. held in the British Library, while some attempt to address every Persian manuscript known to humankind. Of the general catalogues, the one you will probably want to start with is C. A. Storey's Persian literature: A Bio-bibliographical Study. Storey's volumes break down as follows (the volume/fascicle numbers change depending on how it is catalogued/which edition you're using):

• Qur’ānic literature
• Biography (corrections and additions)
• General history, the prophets of early Islam
• Special histories of Persia, central Asia and the remaining parts of the world except India
• History of India
• Mathematics, Weights and measures, Astronomy and astrology, Geography
• Medicine, Encyclopedias and miscellanies, Arts and crafts, Science, Occult arts
• Lexicography, Grammar, Prosody and poetics

I started using the Storey volume on astronomical manuscripts first, but obviously, for historians of India, the volume that contains the History of India is crucial. Also obviously, the volumes are somewhat out of date, even though you'll find plenty to keep you busy. Ghulām Ḥusayn Tasbīḥī wrote a doctoral thesis at the University of London on the problem of updating the volumes, so if you're wondering what you're missing, and why you're missing it, you can read "The Problems of Bringing Storey’s Persian Literature Up to Date (Persian Lexicography)."

Exclusively tuned to the Mughal Empire is D. N. Marshall's Mughals in India: a Bibliographical Survey of Manuscripts. This is good addition to Storey. One difficulty with this index (for me) is that the manuscripts are listed alphabetically according to author--if you know the name of a manuscript, but not the author, you have to do a bit of work to find the description.

If you're working on a science-related topic like me (astronomy), you might want to sit down with A. Rahman's Science and technology in medieval India : a bibliography of source materials in Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian (New Delhi : Indian National Science Academy, 1982). This is a great source, as it lets you sift through Persian, Sanskrit and Arabic science manuscripts simultaneoulsy. I should warn you, the abbreviation "I.O." does not stand for "India Office" in this volume. One strong aspect of this catalogue is the attention given to manuscripts held in collections in India--"I.O." refers to one of these, so if you try to order up a ms. numbered, say, "I.O. 4566," it won't work at the British Library (this I know from personal experience).

In the list provided on the British Library webpage cited above, you will see a few catalogues focused on collections now held in the British Library (previously held in the India Office, the British Museum, or elsewhere).

At the end of the nineteenth century, Carl Hermann Ethe began to catalogue Persian manuscripts in the India Office. The first of two volumes was published in 1903, with the second volume following in 1937. So, if you're trying to find a number and description for a Persian manuscript you think was probably originally held in the India Office (for instance, if your shelfmark/citation begins with "IO"), start with Ethe's Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office.

Similarly, Charles Pierre Henri Rieu catalogued the Persian manuscripts held by the British Museum (along with Arabic and Turkish manuscripts). If you think the manuscript was held by the British Museum (shelfmark will begin with BM in older catalogues), turn to Rieu's 4 volume Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts (1879-95) and his Supplement to the Catalogue of Persian manuscripts in the British Museum (1895) to read the description.

I won't give advice on how to order up I.O. or B.M. manuscripts using the British Library's Integrated Catalogue (online). Generally, you just use the numeric digits, but the process is impossible to describe in text. Ask the reference librarian for help--they can input the citation properly (even they sometimes have to try twice or thrice to get the right string of letters and numbers), then order up the manuscript for you by proxy. They do this all the time, so go ahead and ask for help.

Finally, since I am providing sources for historians of India, I should also mention Elliot and Dowson's The History of India: the Muhammadan Period, as Told by Its Own Historians (31 vols.), even though it is not really a catalogue. This is a very large collection of manuscript descriptions and translations of ms. excerpts into English. You can often read a short extract in The History of India, cross-reference it with Rieu or Ethe shelfmarks, and come up with the original Persian manuscripts 70 minutes later.

Oh, I promised to discuss the trouble-making "D. P." shelfmark. Storey cited a manuscript held in the India Office as "D. P. 627," noting that Ethe had not included it in his catalogue. I asked for assistance from two different reference librarians, but neither one could figure out the shelfmark. Finally, I was able to contact one of the curators of Persian manuscripts, and she told me that it was "Delhi Persian" papers. When I finally managed to get my hands on this manuscript, the staff at the Deliveries desk were mystified--apparently they only infreqently (never?) see the D. P. shelfmark. Storey described these papers in a separate listing, apparently not published. I'll let you know more about it later, as the curator is going to let me read Storey's description of D. P. 627 Thursday.

Maps at the British Library

Here is one small hint re: the Maps Reading Room in the British Library. The types of available maps are quite mind-boggling, and you will want to spend the rest of your life in this room, just looking at maps. However, eventually you will be forced to leave, and you will probably wish to take copies of some maps with you. Unfortunately, photocopying/photo-reproducing maps at the BL is incredibly expensive. Even if you have a very generous grant, you will feel very poor the instant you place an order for a photo reproduction. And, even if you could afford it, you will not be allowed to copy any of the maps from the King's collection (Shelfmark Maps K.Top.115.5., for instance). So, what I found was that the Maps Reading Room was great for looking, but not so great for buying.

Although it is not ideal, you can often find scans of these same maps on the web. Some are printable, some are not, but here are a couple links to get you started.

• India Maps in the David Rumsey Map Collection.
• Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection.
• Digital South Asia Library, Imperial Gazetteer of India.
• Roots Web Historical Maps of India.
• South Asia Maps.

Also, don't forget to check out the catalogue for special collections and maps at your home institution. While there are indeed a lot of maps in the British Library, it is likely that at least some of them are also available at home. Don't waste precious time looking at things you can see before/after your research trip!

Royal Asiatic Society--Finding Aids

The RAS has a nice collection of Persian manuscripts, so if you can't find want you want in the British Library, you might want to look here:

• Codrington, O. "Catalogue of the Arabic, Persian, Hindustani and Turkish manuscripts." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (July 1892): 501-569.

• Morley, W. H. A descriptive catalogue of the historical manuscripts in Arabic and Persian languages, preserved in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society. London 1854.

If you're looking for some of the source material for Tod's Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han or the Central and Western Rajpoot States of India, start here. Particularly pleased to find documents in Sanskrit/Rajasthani relating to the Kachchawahas. Also includes some calendrical and astronomical treatises.

• Barnett, L.D. "Catalogue of the Tod collection of Indian manuscripts." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, II (1940): 129-178.

If you're looking for visual resources, you can investigate the Colebrooke, Doyle, Mackenzie, Ram Raz, Tod and other collections:

• Head, Raymond. Catalogue of paintings, engravings and busts in the collection of the Royal Asiatic Society. London: RAS, 1991.

• Robinson, B.W. Persian paintings in the collection of the Royal Asiatic Society. London: RAS, 1998.

Other catalogues available for RAS:

• Catalogue of printed books, published before 1932, in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society. London: RAS, 1940.

• Cowell, E.B. and Eggeling, J.B. "Catalogue of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society." Journal of the RAS (1876): 1-52 [Hodgson collection].

• Filliozat, J. "Survey of the Pali manuscript collection in the Royal Asiatic Society." Journal of the RAS, series 3, no. 9 (i) (1999): 35-76.

• Ricklefs, M.C. and Voorhoeve, P. Indonesian manuscripts in Britain. Oxford University Press, 1977. [Malay and Javanese MSS].

• Wenzel, H. "List of Tibetan manuscripts and printed books in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society." Journal of the RAS (July 1892): 570-579.

• Winternitz, M.A. A catalogue of the South Indian Sanskrit manuscripts, especially those of the Whish collection, belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. London: RAS, 1902.

British Library Shelfmarks

It can be helpful to know some of the shelfmarks for the British Library. Unlike the Library of Congress system, the BL marks books according to location (although some shelfmarks also indicate type of source, like ZA...ZK=periodical). You can plan your day better if you are familiar with some offsite shelfmarks, since those materials take longer to be delivered to the reading rooms.

1. Items that have shelfmarks with the prefixes listed below are available on the open access shelves of the listed reading room:

HLL, HLR, etc Humanities - Floor 1
HUL, HUR, etc Humanities - Floor 2
HUS Humanities - Floor 2 (Sound Archive)
MSL, MSS, etc Manuscripts Reading Room
MUS Rare Books and Music Reading Room (Music)
OI Oriental and India Office Collections
OPL, etc Social Sciences
RAR, RAX, etc Rare Books and Music Reading Room (Rare Books)

2. Newspaper Shelfmarks.

Shelfmarks of items held by the Newspaper Library are preceded by NL or NPL. These titles may be read only in the Newspaper Library Reading Room in Colindale, North London.

3. All material with the shelfmark DSC is held at the Document Supply service, Boston Spa. They take 24-48 hours to reach the Reading Rooms at St Pancras.

4. Science shelfmarks for books begin with (B) – e.g. (B) 004.6. Items from 2003 to date with these shelfmarks will be on open access

5. The 'Maps' shelfmark is self-explanatory. 'Maps OSD' refers to Ordnance Surveyors' Drawings. Maps.K.Top. indicates Maps from the King's Collection (that's what those books are in the transparent central tower of the library).

6. Some Historic shelfmarks (indicating original owner of material) at the BL:

Shelfmark range: 1.a.1. - 304.k.23.
Former owner: King George III (1738-1820)

657.a.1. - 666.a.69.
Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838)

669.f.3. - 669.f.27.
George Thomason (d. 1666)

671.a.1. - 688.l.9.
Revd Clayton M Cracherode (1730-1799)

Ashley.1. - Ashley.5711.
Thomas James Wise (1859-1937)

B.1. - B.746.
Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820)

Burney.1a. - Burney.1001b.
Revd Charles Burney (1757-1817)

C.1.a.1. - C.16.i.16.
King George III (1738-1830)

Dex.1. - Dex.316.
John Furber Dexter (1847-1917)

E.1. - E.1938.; E.2103. - E.2143.; E.2255. - E.2271.
George Thomason (d. 1666)

Eve.a.1. - Eve.c.29.
John Evelyn (1620-1706)

File.1. - File.849.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

G.1. - G.20240.
Thomas Grenville (1755-1846)

Voyn.1. - Voyn.137.
Wilfred Michael Voynich (1865-1930)

Finding Aids for India Office Maps, British Library

1. Catalogue of manuscript and printed reports, field books, memoirs, maps, etc., of the Indian Surveys, deposited in the map room of the India Office. (London : W.H. Allen & Co., 1878.)

Shelfmark:
Maps 212.a.5.
Maps 7.b.65.

2. A Catalogue of Manuscript and Printed Reports, Field Books, Memoirs, Maps ... of the Indian Surveys deposited in the Map Room of the India Office. (pp. xxi. 672. W. H. Allen & Co.: London, 1878.)

Shelfmark:
11901.h.40.
W 4280
W 3879

3. A catalogue of maps, etc. of India and other parts of Asia / (London : Sold [for H.M.S.O.] by W.H. Allen, 1874.)

Shelfmark:
V 9765

4. Great Britain. India Office. A catalogue of maps, etc. of India and other parts of Asia / (London : [India Office] : Sold by W.H. Allen, 1876.)

Shelfmark:
V 9777

5. Great Britain. India Office. A catalogue of maps of the British possessions in India and other parts of Asia / (London : [H.M.S.O.] : Sold by W.H. Allen, 1870.)

Shelfmark:
V 9778

6. India Office Records A catalogue of maps, plans &c. of India and Burma and other parts of Asia / (London : [s.n.] : Arnold [distributor], 1891.)

Shelfmark:
W 4938(b)
W 4521

7. India Office. Registry and Record Dept. Catalogue of maps, plans, etc. of India : appendices, no. 43-[90]. (London : India Office, 1903-1916.)

Shelfmark:
Maps 64.b.54.

8. Survey of India. Survey of India map catalogue 1931 : extracts showing the holdings of the India Office Records, Map Room. (London : British Library, 1977.)

Shelfmark:
Maps 216.b.61.