10 Societies The Royal Asiatic Society By Xenobe Purvis


On 8 January 1823, a meeting was convened at the home of Henry Tomas Colebrooke in London’s Argyll Street. At the age of 67, Colebrooke had carved out a career in South Asia in the service of the East India Company, while also making a name for himself in Sanskrit scholarship. For almost 10 years, he had been President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and was well placed to oversee the establishment of a new Asiatic Society in London. Tis meeting at Colebrooke’s home was held ‘to consider the expediency of instituting a Society for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in connection with India, and other countries eastward of the Cape of Good Hope’, according to the minutes. Such a society was, it seems, considered expedient – the Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was officially established in March of that year. Colebrooke laid out the agenda for this nascent society: ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘which has much engaged the thoughts of man, is foreign to our inquiry, within the local limits, which we have prescribed to it. We do not exclude from our research the political transactions of Asiatic states, nor the lucubrations of Asiatic philosophers…


Te


aberrations of the human mind are a part of its history… mythology, then, however futile, must… be noticed’. Tis expansive remit was matched


by the range of members it attracted. Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod, the Society’s first librarian, was an esteemed scholar of Indian history and author of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Sir George Tomas Staunton, politician and author of many works on China, who, at the age of twelve, had accompanied his father on Lord Macartney’s mission to China, and Sir Alexander Johnston, President of the Council of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), were also formative early members. Te 19th century saw scholars,


explorers, archaeologists,


princes and prime ministers join the ranks of the Royal Asiatic Society, which, in 1824, received its royal charter. In 1856, it admitted its first woman member, one Mrs Kerr. Te Society swiftly began to accrue


a collection of manuscripts, paintings, and drawings, and other more unusual acquisitions. ‘From the first,’ writes Charles Fraser Beckingham, noted professor of Islamic Studies, donations to the Society,


‘were


somewhat miscellaneous’. Within the first few years of the Society’s existence, its museum boasted stuffed animals, birds’ nests, weapons, fossils, a bottle of poison from the upas tree, engravings from the Romantic painter John Martin, medicinal plants from Sri Lanka, and ‘a ball of


Inscribed Temple of Bhim Sen in the City of Patan and Valley of Nepal, No 12, signed: Raj Man Singh Chitrakar, from the coll. of Brian Houghton Hodgson, pencil drawing, 27.1 x 45.4 cm


ASIAN ART MARCH 2018


Design for the game of Snakes and Ladders by a Maharashtra artist, circa 1800, possibly at Nagpur, gouache on paper mounted on cloth, 84 x 90 cm. Presented by Major Henry Dundas Robertson, 16 April 1831


ENCOURAGEMENT OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND THE ARTS


ambergris in a gold filigree case and enclosed in a gold and silver network purse’ from the Persian prince ‘Abbas Mirza.


In 1830, the museum acquired a


mummy, which was promptly given away to King’s College, London, in consequence of its rotting smell. It was then decided, for obvious reasons, that ‘no deposits of curiosities be received by the museum’ in future. Tis resolution, Beckingham observes wryly, was not kept. Donations made to the Museum in subsequent years were truly eclectic, bison horns,


elephants’


ranging from tails,


a


preserved human hand, coins, spears, a canoe, and much more. Te year 1869 saw the Society


move into a smaller building in Albermarle Street, and many of the items in its museum were given away,


THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY WAS OFFICIALLY ESTABLISHED IN 1823 FOR THE


eventually finding homes in museums across London. Te objects that were retained after the move still, however, formed a collection to be reckoned with. Besides the many books, journals, and manuscripts, the Society was, and still is, in possession of thousands of prints,


paintings, busts and photographs. Te Society continues to make new acquisitions, and, as of January this year, has made parts of its archive available online. Te new digital library gives an insight into the remarkable scope of the Society’s archive.


One


extraordinary piece of archival film footage – now freely available to watch online – is a clip from the late 1920s of an excavation at the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh (murder mystery fans might be interested to learn of the attendance of Agatha Christie at the dig; her husband was an archaeologist). Te website features the digitized archive of Tomas Manning, friend of Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Acquired by the Society in 2015, the archive includes Manning’s diaries and correspondence, detailing his researches and experiences in China and Lhasa. Tere is a hugely enjoyable recording of Manning’s travels in Tibet narrated by Sir John Gielgud, part of a BBC Home Service programme which aired in 1966. Meanwhile, visual art enthusiasts can peruse Raj Man Singh Chitrakar’s sketches of Nepalese architecture (created in 1844), a series of fascinating oil paintings – including a 1792 portrait by James Wales of Madhu Rao Narayan, the Maratha Peshwa, with Nana Fadnavis and attendants – and two Snakes and Ladders games, illuminated.


one beautifully


Te digital library also contains a number of detailed manuscripts, of which


three exceptional Persian


manuscripts deserve particular mention. Although on long-term loan to the Cambridge University Library, the Shahnama of Muhammad Juki, copied in Herat between 1440 and 1445, the Gulistan of the poet Sa’di, completed in 1583 in Fatehpur Sikri, and an autograph copy of Kitab-i Mathnawiyyat-i Zafar Khan, copied in Lahore in 1663, can all be explored online. While the digital library continues


Madhu Rao Narayan, the Maratha Peshwa, with Nana Fadnavis and attendants (1792) by James Wales, oil on canvas, 228 x 190 cm. Presented by the wife of Major-General Archibald Robinson, 4 March 1854. Te portrait was commissioned by the Peshwa shortly after James Wales arrived in Pune in July 1792


to grow, researchers can make use of the physical archive at the Society’s current location in Stephenson Way. Te collections are available to members and non-members alike, while the Society hosts regular open evenings, public lectures and seminars. It also publishes a quarterly journal, as well as a number of books every year. With bi-centenary celebrations approaching in 2023, the Society continues to thrive, drawing on the support of its vibrant and engaged community of members. In doing so, it stays true to the vision laid out by Colebrooke and his fellow founding members in providing those with an interest in the history, cultures and languages of Asia with an enduring forum for research and scholarship. • Royal Asiatic Society, 14 Stephenson Way, Kings Cross, London, royalasiaticsociety.org. Associate societies can be found in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka.


drawings,


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