Asian and African studies blog

The Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus in her lap surrounded by the Magi and shepherds. (Աստուածաշունչ հնոց եւ նորոց կտականարաց մերեն պարունակօղ շարակարգութեամբ նախնեացն մերոց եւ ճմարտասիրաց թարգմանչաց (Amsterdam: St. Ējmiatsin and St. Sargis, 1666-68), p. 501). (Or.70.bb.2).

With Christmas almost upon us, it’s time for the Curatorial Team in the Asian and African Collections to put down our tools and enjoy a well-deserved break. Before we go, however, I’d like to leave you with a few visual treats to enjoy over your own holiday slow-down. 

After working with our Armenian materials for much of the last year, I decided to hunt among them for a few images of the Nativity. Thanks to the monumental work of our tireless and exceptionally committed former Lead Curator for the Christian Orient, Dr. Vrej Nersessian, information about these is never out of hand. His A Catalogue of the Armenian Manuscripts in the British Library and Catalogue of Early Armenian Books, 1512-1850, together with Conybeare’s 1913 Catalogue, ensure the discoverability of nearly all the early Armenian textual heritage in the British Library.  

In October of this year, I visited the National Library of Armenia’s Printing Museum. This was followed by a trip to Rome and a presentation by Dr. Erin Piñón, now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches in Florenz and expert on early Armenian printing. Both have inspired me to seek out images in early printed Armenian Bibles, rather than manuscripts. Armenian printing in Europe is closely bound up with the Mkhitarists, an Armenian Catholic order based in San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice and Vienna. And, as Armenian Catholics celebrate Christmas on 25 December, while the Apostolic Church marks it on 6 January, it seemed fitting to use a printed work for your December delight.  

An image of the printer Abgar T'okhatets'i meeting the Doge of Venice. (Սաղմոս ի Դագիթ, (Venice: Abgar T'okhatets'i, 1565-66), f. 59r). (Or.70.a.9)

The oldest Armenian printed book in the British Library is an imperfect copy of Psalter printed at Venice by Abgar T’okhatets’i (Աբգար Թոխաթեցի) in 1565. It doesn’t include images of the Nativity, but it does have this delightful woodcut illustration of his reception by the Doge of Venice.  

Gabriel arrives on a cloud to inform Mary that she will conceive the Messiah. (Աստուածաշունչ հնոց եւ նորոց կտականարաց մերեն պարունակօղ շարակարգութեամբ նախնեացն մերոց եւ ճմարտասիրաց թարգմանչաց (Amsterdam: St. Ējmiatsin and St. Sargis, 1666-68), p. 499). (Or.70.bb.2).

For a view on the Annunciation and the birth of Christ, we must turn to something slightly younger and more northern. This is the first printed Armenian Bible, including the New Testament, printed at St. Ējmiatsin and St. Sarkis in Amsterdam in 1666-68. Father Vrej’s Catalogue states that the text is based on a manuscript dated 1295 CE, adjusted to the Latin Vulgate and edited by Oskan Vardapet Erewants’i (Ոսկան Երևանցի), who was also its printer. It is from Oskan’s name that this Bible is occasionally called the Oskan Bible. It contains a fair number of woodcut illustrations by Christoffel van Sichem II, including one of the Nativity (at the top of this post), as well as others of the Annunciation just above this paragraph and of the Circumcision of Jesus below. The first two prints can also be found in Dutch-language works, as seen in the collection of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (#12 and #1 respectively). The letters in the images of the Annunciation and Jesus in the Temple should correspond to legends that are present in the Dutch texts.  

The mohel bends over Jesus to circumcize him in a scene that become much more common in Western European Christian art throughout the Renaissance, but was largely absent from Armenian Christian art. (Աստուածաշունչ հնոց եւ նորոց կտականարաց մերեն պարունակօղ շարակարգութեամբ նախնեացն մերոց եւ ճմարտասիրաց թարգմանչաց (Amsterdam: St. Ējmiatsin and St. Sargis, 1666-68), p. 502). (Or.70.bb.2)

The Circumcision scene very obviously mirrors other northern European renditions, such as this one by Flemish engraver Hieronymus Wierix in the Rijksmuseum, and this by Flemish printmaker Jan Matheus, also in the Rijksmuseum. Both have a candelabra above the Christ Child, and the circumcision is being performed by a mohel or other professional in a temple, not at home. The clothing of those around Christ is modelled more on Northern European patterns than anything that the artists might have imagined was in style in Palestine 1600 years earlier. Lastly, the inclusion of the IHS Christogram and heart with three nails (those that pierced Christ on the Cross) are the emblems of the Jesuits, a Catholic order founded in 1540 and influential on Christian communities in West Asia, including one particular printer we’ll meet below. 

The front board of the 1666 Bible showing the Crucifixion scene and its elaborate metal clasps. (Աստուածաշունչ հնոց եւ նորոց կտականարաց մերեն պարունակօղ շարակարգութեամբ նախնեացն մերոց եւ ճմարտասիրաց թարգմանչաց (Amsterdam: St. Ējmiatsin and St. Sargis, 1666-68). (Or.70.bb.2)

The illustrations in this Bible are not the only eye-catching component of the work. The Cambridge holding has only a plain calf binding, while the Library of Congress holding is also bereft of its original binding. The British Library’s copy of the work, however, has a beautiful leather binding with metal decoration and clasps, with one side showing the Crucifixion and the back an image of the Virgin Mary. 

The title page of the 1705 Istanbul printing of the Bible in Armenian. The stamp at the bottom of the page is of the Mkhitarean Library in Vienna. (Աստուածաշունչ Հնոց եւ Նորոց Կտակարանաց ներպարունակօղ շարակարգութեամբ նախնեաց մերոց եւ ճշմարտասիրաց թարգմանչաց (Istanbul: Petros Latinats'i, 1705). (17021.b.7)

This text was again printed in Istanbul in 1705 by Petros Latinats’i (Պետրոս Լատինացի), a student of Oskan’s. Copies of the 1705 Bible are relatively rare compared to some of the other editions, but we are lucky to care for one at the British Library. Latinats’i’s text mirrors that of the Amsterdam edition, but our copy does not include the same set of engravings. The Nativity scene is notably absent, although it does have a wonderful title page.  

Despite the inclusion of elements of the Latin Vulgate in this text, it is not necessarily a Catholic work. The redactions were necessary, as described in a blog about the Oskan Bible, to win the support of secular and (Catholic) religious authorities and censors. Indeed, the Armenian Rite is used by both members of the Armenian Apostolic Church (who are in communion with the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, and various other denominations often called Oriental Orthodox) and the Armenian Catholic Church. This latter group reflects the influence of Latin Crusaders in the Kingdom of Cilicia and successive, deepening contacts with the Latin Catholic Church in Rome. And when it comes to (sectarian) printing history, the key date is not the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, when the Armenian Church and other Oriental Orthodox Churches ended communion with the rest of Christianity, but 1773, when some Mkhitarists split from the Apostolic Church but remained in communion with Rome.   

The Nativity scene as found in the 1733 print of the Armenian translation of the Bible completed in Venice by Mkhit'ar Sebastats'i. (Աստուածաշունչ Գիրք Հնոց եւ Նորոց Կտակարանաց, աշխատասիրութեամբ Մխիթարայ Սէբաստացւոյ (Venice: Anton Bortoli, 1733-35), p. 932). (17021.d.3)

We’re getting ahead of ourselves. In 1701, an enterprising Armenian Catholic monk, Mkhit’ar Sebastats’i (Մխիթար Սեբաստացի), founded the Mkhitarist Congregation in Istanbul, gradually moving it to the Peloponnese and then San Lazzaro. In addition to his religious duties, Mkhit’ar took up the task of regularizing the Armenian language and printing religious materials. Among his masterpieces is his Bible, printed in Venice in 1733-35 (the topic of Dr. Piñón’s lecture), a re-edition of the 1666-68 Oskan Bible. It too includes a small woodcut of the Nativity, showing Baby Jesus atop the Virgin’s knee receiving gifts from the Magi. A bright star shines down on them, with Joseph tucked in the background and the shepherds even further removed. What I find most interesting is that the manger seems to be an afterthought. A thatched roof is there, but it’s partially obscured by the masonry of some now partially-ruined Classical structure, a stone column beside Mary. 

The Virgin Mary with the Christ Child asleep in a basinet as a shepherd adores him. (Sebastats'i, Mkhit'ar, Գիրք Քրիստոնէական վարդապետութեան, ընդ որում եւ երգք տաղից առադրին (Venice: Anton Bortoli, 1771), p. 84). (17026.c.13)

Religious practice, Catholicism included, relies on more than one text. As important as the Old and New Testaments might be, a host of other works – lectionaries, missals, catechisms, not to mention Church law and philosophical texts, plus religiously themed poetry – all impart knowledge and wisdom on the practices and beliefs of the Church. They strengthen believers’ faith and provide common bonds to keep the congregation whole. Armenian Catholic printers, whether Mkhit’ar or his successors, did turn their hands to such texts as well. The last image that I’ll leave you with is one less common in terms of traditional Nativity imagery. Nonetheless, it seems to me a particularly poignant image of tranquility between the Virgin, the Holy Infant, and a host of other actors. Taken from a catechism produced by the Mkhit’arists in Venice in 1771, just two years before their schism, it depicts Mary rocking the Baby Jesus in a basinet. Cherubim are playing music and showering mother and child with flowers while a shepherd boy, his crook in hand, and a tiny lamb laying by his feet, pays his respects to the newborn king. Mary puts her finger to her lips, reminding the visitor that Baby Jesus, too, needs his rest.  

It’s an image that reminds us all to take things a bit slower over the coming weeks. With it, we leave you in the hope that your holiday season is filled with peace and joy.  

Dr. Michael Erdman, Head, Middle East and Central Asia 

Further Reading 

Conybeare, F. C. A catalogue of the Armenian manuscripts in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1913). 

Nersessian, V. A catalogue of the Armenian manuscripts in the British Library acquired since the year 1913 and of collections in other libraries in the United Kingdom (London: The British Library, 2012). 

Nersessian, V. Catalogue of early Armenian books, 1512-1850 (London: The British Library, 1980). 

Animals amaze, fascinate and delight us!

In the British Library's new exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound (21 April - 29 August 2023)  you can see how documenting the animals world has resulted in some of humankind's most awe-inspiring art, science and sound recordings. It can take years of research to unlock the secrets of a single species. Did you know that the first photograph of a live giant squid was published in 2005? That bats were first described as birds, and sharks referred to as dogs.

From an Ancient Greek papyrus detailing the mating habits of dogs to the earliest photographs of Antarctic animals and the mournful song of the last living Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, recorded in 1983 and declared extinct in 2000, this is the first major exhibition to explore the different ways in which animals have been written about, visualised and recorded.

The exhibition is arranged into four distinctive environments and visitors will journey through darkness, water, land and air - to encounter striking artworks, handwritten manuscripts, sound recording and printed publications that speak to contemporary debates around discovery, knowledge, conservation, climate change and extinction. Each zone also includes a bespoke, atmospheric soundscape created using recordings from the Library's sound archive.

Some of the highlights includes: 

An illustration of a fruit bat, painted at Barrackpore, India. 1804-7, British Library, NHD3/517.

An image of a 'monkfish' from Pierre Belon's De aquatilibus (Of aquatic species), Paris, 1553. British Library, 446.a.6. 

Illustration of the defects of a horse from Kitab al-baytarah (Book on Veterinary Medicine) by Abu Muhammad Ahmad ibn Atiq al-Azdi, 13th century. British Library, Or 1523, ff. 62v-63r.

An education record for children: The Hip-po-pot-a-mus. Talking Book Corporation, 1918-29. British Library, 9CS0029512.

A section of the Chuju zui (Illustrations of Animals and Insects) showing dragonflies and moths, Japan, 1851. British Library, Or 1312. 

There is a season of in-person and online events inspired by the exhibition, such asa Late at the Library with musician, composer and producer Cosmo Sheldrake hosted by musician, author and broadcaster Cerys Matthews and Animal Magic: A Night of Wild Enchantment where five speakers, including wildlife cameraman, ornithologist and Strictly Come Dancing winner Hamza Yassin and birder, environmentalist and diversity activist, Mya-Rose Craig, each have 15 minutes to tell a story. A selection of these works are included in an outdoor exhibitionaround Kings Cross.

A richly illustrated publication written by exhibition curators Malini Roy, Cam Sharp Jones and Cheryl Tipp can be purchased through the British Library's shop. The publication is supplemented with interactive QR technology allows readers to listen to sound recordings.

The exhibition is made possible with support from Getty through The Paper Project initiative and PONANT. With thanks to The American Trust for the British Library and The B.H. Breslauer Fund of the American Trust for the British Library. Audio soundscapes created by Greg Green with support from the Unlocking our Sound Heritage project, made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Scientific advice provided by ZSL (the Zoological Society of London). 

The Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, or Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, was established in Batavia in 1778. Founded by the botanist Jacob Radermacher, the Bataviaasch Genootschap is the oldest learned society in Asia founded by Europeans. After a failed attempt to gain the patronage of Stadtholder Willem V (1748–1806; William V, Prince of Orange), the governors of the BG focussed their attentions on their publication Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap der Kunsten en Wetenschappen, ‘Transactions of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences’.  They envisaged Verhandelingen as a vehicle for building an academic reputation in Holland and more widely in Europe, modelling themselves on the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (Dutch Society of Sciences) in Haarlem.

A view of Batavia, the capital of the Dutch Settlements in India, by John Wells, ca. 1800. British Library, P 494

The editors (governors) of Verhandelingen announced competitions to attract contributions, with limited success. Therefore, many of the articles were written by the editors themselves. Both Radermacher and Van Iperen wrote no fewer than three articles for Vol. 1 (printed in 1779 and 1781) and van Hogendorp wrote two, including one jointly with Radermacher. Perhaps due partly to a shortage of material, during the course of the 18th century only six volumes of Verhandelingen were published: Vol. 1 in the year after its founding, in 1779, Vol. 2 in 1780, Vol. 3 in 1787, Vol. 4 in 1786 (sic), Vol. 5 in 1790 and Vol. 6 in 1792.

These early volumes of Verhandelingen are not only extremely rare, but appear to have a complex publication history, with copies of the same volume bearing different dates of printing, and sometimes being reissued at a later date. The British Library holds an incomplete set of Verhandelingen under two main shelfmark series. The earliest volumes - all originating from the private collection of Sir Joseph Banks - are assigned individual shelfmarks in the range 438.k.10-29, which covers Vols 1-15, but in a range of different editions. The earliest are Vol. 1, which contains the ‘Constitution of the Society’, printed in Batavia in 1781 and held at 438.k.13, and two issues of Vol. 2 held at 438.k.15 and 438.k.14, while copies of a third edition of Vols 1 and 2, printed in Batavia in 1825 and 1826, are also held as 438.k.28 and 438.k.29.

Because of the Society’s academic ambitions, as mentioned above, the governors also looked for printers in the Dutch Republic to print Dutch/European editions of the volumes published in Batavia. They commissioned the book sellers Arrenberg in Rotterdam and the printer Allard from Amsterdam to do a reprint of the first volume as soon as it had appeared in Batavia. Thus, the first three volumes appeared in the Dutch Republic in 1781, 1784 and 1787 respectively, and are held in the British Library as 438.k.10, 438.k.11 and 438.k.12. These Dutch editions were more elaborate than the Batavian ones, with copper engraved foldout plates in them, although Vol.1 lacks the Constitution. The British Library’s copies of Vols. 4-15 held at the 438.k. shelfmark are all printed in Batavia.

Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap der Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Vol. 13, printed in Batavia in 1832. British Library, 438.k.25

By the beginning of the 19th century the Society was almost moribund, but major political changes were then afoot. At the time of the founding of the Bataviaasch Genootschap in 1778, Batavia was the seat of administration of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC), but in 1799 the VOC collapsed into bankruptcy and the governance was taken over by the Dutch state. In the early years of the 19th century, the Napoleonic wars in Europe spilled over into the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. A fleet assembled by the Governor-General of Bengal, Lord Minto, invaded Java in August 1811 and defeated the Franco-Dutch forces. For the next five years, Java was governed by a British administration, with Thomas Stamford Raffles as Lieutenant-Governor, and in 1812 Raffles took over the Presidency of the Batavian Society.

With Raffles’ encouragement, Vol. 7 of Verhandelingen was published in 1814, and was the first to appear mainly in English. It contained an address by Raffles as well as a number of articles by Thomas Horsfield and one each by Colin Mackenzie and John Leyden. The next issue, Vol. 8, published in 1816 – the final year of the British administration of Java – was also mainly in English.

After the departure of the British from Java in 1816, the Verhandelingen reverted to publication in Dutch, with some contributions in French or German. In 1857, on the occasion of the publication of Vol. 25, P. J. Veth wrote a short history of the Society drawing primarily on copies of the Verhandelingen. This appeared in vol. 21 of De Gids (‘The Guide’), the most distinguished literary journal in Holland, of which Veth was the editor (the British Library’s copy is held at 3535.930200 with another copy at P.P.4595). The British Library also holds an incomplete set of later issues of Verhandelingen, shelved at Ac.975/6, dating from 1860 to 1950, when the journal ceased publication. Following Indonesian independence in 1945, by 1962 the Society had essentially ceased activities, but was eventually transformed into the National Museum, with the books and manuscripts joining the newly-formed National Library in 1980.

The initial, English, title page, of the Transactions of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, Vol. VIII, printed in Batavia in 1816. This is followed by the Dutch title page, of the Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. British Library, RB.23.a.39867

We were therefore delighted to be able to acquire recently for the British Library, from Voewood Rare Books, a copy of Vol. 8, printed in Batavia in 1816, which has been assigned the rare book shelfmark of RB.23.a.39867. Vol. 8 contains 10 articles, of which three are in Dutch and seven in English, all paginated separately, starting with an Address from the President, Raffles himself (95 pp). Raffles is also responsible for an account of the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 (25 pp), while John Crawfurd contributed the text and English summaries of two 'ancient Javanese' (actually Sanskrit) inscriptions (6 pp).

Contents pages of Vol. 8 of the Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Batavia, 1816. British Library, RB.23.a.39867

The largest number of pages in the volume are occupied by three lengthy articles by Thomas Horsfield, on Medical plants of Java (53 pp), the Mineralogy of Java (47 pp), and a long ‘Essay on the Geography, Mineralogy and Botany, of the Western portion of the territory of the native Princes of Java’ (183 pp), this last essay being the only portion of this volume which is presently widely available digitally. Thomas Horsfield (1773-1859) was an American doctor who first visited Java in 1800. Entranced by the riches of the natural environment, he returned in 1801 and entered the service of the Dutch authorities. His appointment enabled him to carry out intensive research into the geology and natural history of Java, as well as indulging his interest in antiquities. Following the British occupation of Java, he continued his work with Raffles’ encouragement. While on his extensive travels around Java by river, sea and on horseback, Horsfield was constantly sketching, and some of his pictures include in the corner what appears to be a self-portrait: a small drawing of a European man, invariably with a sketchbook. When Horsfield left Java in 1818, he retired to England, where he became the first Keeper of the East India Company’s Museum from 1820 to 1859. Many of his drawings of natural history and antiquities are held today in the British Library.

Pencil sketch of of the ruins of Candi Sari in Central Java, by Thomas Horsfield, with possibly a self-portrait in the bottom right foreground, ca. 1800-1818. British Library, WD 957, f. 9 (99)

References:
Hans Groot, Van Batavia naar Weltevreden; Het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappan, 1778-1867. Leiden: KITLV, 2009. 
Register op de artikelen voorkomende in het Tijdschrift voor Indische taal-land- en volkenkunde en de Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, etc. ‘Index to the articles appearing in the Journal for Indian languages,- country and anthropological studies and the Transactions of the Batavian Society for Arts and Sciences’ by Hinloopen Labberton. Batavia, ‘s Hage, 1908. [An overview of the contents of the Verhandelingen from 1779 to 1907.]
Lian The and Paul W. van der Veur, The Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap: an Annotated Content Analysis. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, Southeast Asia Program, 1973.

Probably the best open access to Verhandelingen is provided by the digitised set available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which - albeit incomplete - ranges from an 1825 printing of Vol. 1 to Vol. 61 of 1915.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator for Southeast Asia, and Marja Kingma, Curator for Dutch collections

The ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ Project has successfully digitised rare and unique books from the British Library’s South Asian collections dating from 1713-1914. Launched in late 2015, the project was funded by the AHRC Newton-Bhabha Fund and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. During Phase 1 of the project, over 1000 unique and rare Bengali books were digitised, and a further 600 books printed in Assamese, Sylheti and Urdu languages were made available online in Phase 2.

A range of highlights that have been digitised through this project can be seen here: https://www.bl.uk/early-indian-printed-books

The project has promoted Digital Humanities research in addition to generating new perspectives on the British Library’s extensive South Asia collections through a network of international collaborations, including our project partners Jadavpur University and the Shristi Institute.

Learn more about the project here.

To complement the Two Centuries of Indian Print Project, a series of South Asian seminars were hosted by the Library, whereby academics and researchers from the UK and abroad shared their research and knowledge, including discussions chaired by curators and specialists in the field. The talks were inspired by the Two Centuries of Indian Print project and often referenced the British Library collections, covering topics relating to South Asian history.

The first series took place in November 2016 and continued every month throughout 2017 and 2018. In 2019 the series took place in the Knowledge Centre, running from June to October. As a result of the pandemic the series was paused in 2020 and the seminars resumed online in 2021.

The South Asia Series talks from 2016-2019 are available to listen to through SoundCloud.

Recordings from seminars that took place in 2021 are available on YouTube.

Highlights from South Asia Seminar Series 2016

The first talk of the series was presented by Dr Richard David Williams, formerly a cultural historian of South Asia and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. Dr Williams is now a Senior Lecturer in Music and South Asian Studies at SOAS. The title of this talk was ‘Forgotten Music and Muted Women: gender, performance and print in the British Library’ . Dr Williams examined Mughal and colonial era sources in a variety of languages to draw particular focus to female musicians, dancers, poets, and patrons, and demonstrated how women were deeply involved in pre-modern musical culture.

You can listen to this talk here.

An illustrated page from the Sarmayah i 'ishrat , an Urdu musciological treatise, by Sadiq Ali Khan Dihlavi (1875). (British Library, VT 638)

In November 2017, Dr Priyanka Basu, former Project Curator of Two Centuries of Indian Print Project and currently Lecturer in Performing Arts at Kings College London, presented a talk titled ‘The ‘High' and ‘Low’ of the Farce in Colonial Bengal: Bat-tala, Proscenium and Beyond’. The second half of the nineteenth century in Bengal saw a number of new and recurring themes in dramatic/literary productions. Social themes were best represented through the genre of farce. Bat-tala or the veritable Grub Street of Calcutta, was prolific in the production of ‘low-life print’. Dr Basu looked at the texts from the two divisions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ tastes in order to understand the marginal and subversive nature of the Bat-tala farces in comparison to the colonial Bengali dramatic canon, and more broadly the cultural and literary politics surrounding the farce in colonial Bengal.

This talk can be heard here.

Highlights from South Asia Seminar Series 2017:

In May 2017, Dr Christopher Bahl, a former PhD student at SOAS, and currently Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Durham University, examined Arabic manuscripts from the Royal Library of Bijapur in his talk. ‘ Cultural Entrepôts and Histories of Circulation: The Arabic Manuscripts of the Royal Library of Bijapur’ examined the historical circulation of Arabic manuscripts, which linked South Asia with other regions of the western Indian Ocean world, including Egypt, the Hijaz, Yemen, and Iran during the early modern period. In particular, Dr Bahl looked at the historical development of the Royal Library of Bijapur in the Deccan, today among the India Office Library collections in the British Library, and how its collection of Arabic manuscripts provided crucial insights into the courtly circulation, social use and cultural significance of these texts in a local Indo-Persian environment.

Listen to this talk here.

Arabic Manuscript from Bijapur Library. (1617, British Library, Bijapur 7)

In August 2017, Lubaaba Al-Azami, an AHRC funded doctoral candidate from the University of Liverpool presented her talk: ‘Writing Empire: The Memoirs of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Founder of Mughal India’. The founder of the Mughal Empire, Zahirunddin Muhammad Babur was an accomplished poet and writer as well as fulfilling his role as a prince and military commander. Among his writings are his renowned memoirs, the Baburnama, rare manuscripts which can be found in the British Library collection. This talk focused on Babur’s use of Chagatai Turkic in writing the memoirs, arguing that this choice of language is a marker of the Mughal Empire’s celebration of matrilineal imperial heritage.

Listen to this talk here.

Babur greets courtiers at the Id Festival (1595, British Library, Johnson 2, 12)

Highlights from South Asia Seminar Series 2018:

The 2018 South Asia Series included a fascinating talk given by Dr Katherine Butler Schofield, Senior Lecturer in South Asian Music and History at Kings College London. ‘The Maestro: Remembering Khushhal Khan “Gunasamudra” in Eighteenth-Century Delhi’, examined the life of the court musician Khushal Khan (great grandson of the most famous Mughal musician Tansen). He was chief musician to the Emperor Shah Jahan (r.1627-58) and was written about extensively in his lifetime as a virtuoso classical singer of exceptional merit and serious character. In this talk Katherine retells the story of Khushal Khan from the vantage point of the 1750’s, looking back over the canonical Mughal writings on music of Shah Jahan’s and Aurangzeb’s reigns. In doing so, she considers what they tell us about the role and power of music at the Mughal court at the empire’s height, before everything began to unravel. This talk was also part of a series conducted by Katherine called Histories of the Ephemeral: Writing about Music in Late Mughal India 1757-1858.

Listen to this talk here.

Opening pages of Sahasras, the 1000 dhrupad songs of Nayak Bakhshu. (British Library, IO Islamic 1116)

In May 2018, Dr Saqib Baburi, a former member of the African and Asian Studies project 'Digital access to Persian Manuscripts' delivered a talk titled ‘Sufism and Persian Manuscripts from the Delhi Collection, British Library’ . The British East India Company’s victories in 1858 ending the Indian Mutiny also signified the end of the Great Mughals. With their demise, the new Government of India acquired the famed Mughal Imperial Library along with other manuscript collections from Delhi, the former imperial capital. Transferred to the India Office Library, the ‘Delhi Collection' was inherited by the British Library. In this talk Saqib Baburi focusses on his recent study of works specifically dealing with Sufism, mysticism and metaphysics in the Delhi Persian collection. This illustrated paper presented new findings, and examined ways in which extant manuscripts helped to illustrate Delhi’s diverse spiritual traditions.

Listen here.

List of contents from the opening of a late-sixteenth-century collection of letters teaching mystical principles. (British Library, Delhi Persian 1129B)

Highlights from South Asia Seminar Series 2019:

In August 2019, Farha Noor, research fellow and PhD student at the University of Heidelberg, presented on the Progressive Movement of female writers in North India. In her talk ‘Witnessing History, Writing Nostalgia: the Progressive Women’ , Farha explored literary revolutionaries such as Rashid Jahan and Ismat Chughtai and how they broke new ground, inspiring many women to write within the Progressive milieu. Within this talk, Farha investigated the entanglements of genre and gender while rethinking ‘Nostalgia’ and its relationship with forms of life writing. Works by writers such as Shaukat Kaifi and Hamida Salim were also considered.

Listen to this talk here.

A potrait of Shaukat Kaifi (1928- ). (Kaifī, Shaukat, Yād kī rahguzar, Naʾi Dihlī : Sṭar Pablīkeshanz, 2006. YP.2006.a.7145) (Not for reuse)

In August 2019, Christin Hoene, formerly a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of English Literature at the University of Kent and currently Assistant Professor in Literary Studies at Maastricht University, gave a talk titled ‘Jagadish Chandra Bose and the Politics of Science in India’. Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) was an Indian scientist and polymath who first gained an international reputation for his work as a physicist in the 1890s. Throughout his scientific career, which spanned four decades, Bose had to fight prejudices amongst his colleagues in the west concerning his skills and credibility as a scientist. Moreover, western scientists were suspicious in regard to Bose’s interdisciplinary approach to science. Christin Hoene examined how Bose attacked these prejudices repeatedly in his writings, and particularly in his numerous public speeches.

Listen to this talk here.

A portrait of Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937). (British Library, V 21994) (Not for reuse)

Highlights from South Asia Seminar Series 2021:

In February 2021, Kanupriya Dhingra, research scholar at the Centre for Cultural, Literary, and Postcolonial Studies, at SOAS, University of London, presented a talk with the title ‘Locating Daryaganj Sunday Book Market’. This talk engaged with the spatiality of Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazar (or, Daryaganj Sunday Footpath Book Market). This local weekly market for used, rare, and pirated books has been operating in Old Delhi, every Sunday, for the past fifty years. Kanupriya discussed its stop-go history and traced the bazar’s location on the streets over the years, whilst examining its recent relocation to a rented, gated complex run by the civic authorities, in September 2019.

You can watch a recording of this online talk here.

'Street behind the Jama Musjid, Delhi, 1880s'. (S C Sen, 'Earl of Jersey Collection'. Photo 807/2(20))

In February 2021, Vebhuti Duggal Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi, delivered the talk ‘Becoming a Listener in Mid-Twentieth Century North India’. Here Professor Duggal unpacked the idea of becoming a listener as it emerged in narratives of ‘Main shrota kaise bana/ bani (How did I become a listener)’ that peppered Hindi-language magazines. These magazines, referred to as shrota sangh patrikayen (listeners’ club magazines) were produced, circulated and consumed largely in the ‘Hindi heartland’ of North India during the mid-twentieth century.

Watch a recording of this talk here.

The South Asia Seminar Series has been an important forum for presenting research, facilitating discussions and engaging audiences with the British Library’s South Asian collections whilst promoting the Two Centuries of Indian Print Project. By making these seminars accessible online it is hoped that global audiences can gain new insights on South Asian history and develop their understanding of the British Library collections. The Two Centuries of Indian Print: South Asia Seminars have paved a valuable path for similar events in the future.

Paramdip Khera, Project Manager, Two Centuries of Indian Print

(Left) Art work by Sudanese artist Ibrahim El Salahi (b. 1930) in issue 13 of Ḥiwār (1964), edited by Palestinian poet Tawfiq Sayigh (1923-1971). (British Library, 14599.e.69)
(Right) Front cover of issue 7 (1963) of Ḥiwār magazine. (British Library, 14599.e.69)

Between April and June 2021, the British Library and Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, hosted Histories and Archives of Arabic Publishing: an online series of talks exploring publishing practices in Arabic as a site for unfolding intellectual networks, artistic practices and political imaginaries from the 1960s until the present.

The series was co-curated and convened by Hana Sleiman, Research Fellow in History at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and Daniel Lowe, Curator of Arabic Collections at the British Library.

Recordings from all four events in the series are now available to watch on the British Library’s YouTube channel and we have collated them below for your convenience.

We regarded the series as a space for collective learning. As such we invite anyone with an interest in the subjects and themes raised —both in Arabic and different linguistic and regional fields— to be in touch so we can explore potential activities and interventions that build upon this series. You can do this by emailing Hana and Daniel.

Kayfa ta: On Shapeshifting Texts and Other Publishing Tactics
Ala Younis and Maha Maamoun appeared in conversation with Hala Auji

Archives of Design and Designing the Archive
Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès and Moe Elhosseiny

Visualising the archive: Arabic publishing during the Cold War
Zeina Maasri and Fehras Publishing Practices

This session was organised in partnership with Delfina Foundation as part of their Collecting as Practice programme, and Middle East History Group, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. Fehras Publishing Practices current exhibition is Borrowed Faces: Future Recall is on at Mosaic Rooms, London, until 26 September 2021.

Fragmented Archives and Histories of Solidarity
Refqa Abu-Remaileh and Kristine Khouri

Hana Sleiman, Research Fellow in History, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge
Daniel Lowe, Curator of Arabic Collections, British Library

Between April-June 2021 the British Library and Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, will co-host Histories and Archives of Arabic Publishing: an online series of talks exploring publishing practices in Arabic as a site for unfolding intellectual networks, artistic practices and political imaginaries from the 1960s until the present.

From the collected archive for the project Borrowed Faces by Fehras Publishing Practices, Berlin, 2018-2021.
© Ferras Publishing Practices

The series has been co-curated and convened by Hana Sleiman, Research Fellow in History at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and Daniel Lowe, Curator of Arabic Collections at the British Library.

The series has been organised in partnership with the Delfina Foundation, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and the Middle East History Group, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.

Video still from Past Disquiet.
© Past Disquiet

Engaging with a variety of artistic, design, archival, curatorial and academic research projects, this series will reflect on the multiple and overlapping worlds of publishing and on the contemporary efforts to reconstruct and reimagine them.

Learning from the leading practitioners in the field, the series examines past and present practices of publishing in Arabic. It explores questions of scale of operations and reach; mediums and formats; audience and language; and the social and political context that gave rise to the practices in question. The series also explores contemporary collecting practices of publishing archives. It highlights collections’ capacity to foreground publishing archives not merely as a signifier of other historical processes but as a historical process in its own right.

Left: Image courtesy of Kayfa ta.
© Kayfa ta

Right: Hala Auji. 
© Hala Auji

How to maneuver: shapeshifting texts and other publishing tactics

The first session in the series on Tuesday 27 April at 17:00 BST (register via Zoom) brings together artists and curators Ala Younis and Maha Maamoun, in conversation with art historian Hala Auji, to talk about Kayfa ta: On Shapeshifting Texts and Other Publishing Tactics. In 2012, they founded Kayfa ta as an independent publishing initiative that emerged from a need to break out of the limited readership and distribution of alternative books: books that cross genres, engage a mixed range of writers and readers, and are not driven by restrictive market values that control who and what is publishable. Their project is also interested in identifying the mechanisms of “gate-keeping”, be they in art or publishing, that shape and limit the voices and practices that have access to a wider public. In 2019, Kayfa ta expanded its interest into understanding the wider field of self and independent publishing and distribution, as well as the new challenges facing access of the private to shared public platforms, and the space left to maneuver the mounting obstacles therein. Their talk explores the expanded fields of contemporary publishing and distribution – modes of making-public and of public–making, as developed through quotidian as well as artistic strategies – as a revealing entry point to understanding contemporary efforts to limit and expand the space of the commons.

Left: Arabic Design Library by Khatt Books.
© Khatt Books

Right: Moe Elhossieny.
© Ahmed Othman

Archives of design and designing the archive

On Tuesday 11 May at 17:00 BST (register via Zoom) Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès, Founding Director of the Khatt Foundation and Khatt Books publishers, will speak on The Arabic Design Library: Alternative Narratives from the Arab World. She will address the importance of documenting and presenting an alternative design history from parts of the world that are rarely covered in main-stream design publications. She will present the series of design monographs, The Arabic Design Library, published by Khatt Books since 2016. The series covers the work of some of the Arab world's design pioneers (including the likes of Hilmi al-Tuni, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Dia Azzawi, Nasri Khattar and Abdulkader Arnaout) who were practicing in the period stretching from the 1960s to the 1980s and who in their own way, engaged with design as a tool for political emancipation and socio-cultural progress.

She will be joined by Cairo-based multidisciplinary designer, researcher and writer Moe Elhosseiny who will speak on Arabic Cover Design Archive: Digital Archives as Design Activism. Through engaging with Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever, he takes a critical approach to history, archival practices and access in relation to collective memory in South Western Asia and North Africa. With archives being suppressed, neglected, avoided, or locked away, there is an urgency to support collective memory building. Consequently, forms of digital archiving may take on the role of design activism. Elhosseiny founded the Arabic Cover Design Archive which seeks to surface and record book design practices throughout the history of Arabic publishing, providing an accessible digital extension to an often inaccessible physical archive. By making the archive visible through digital means, this project multiplies the instances where engagement with this material can occur. It thus aims to increase the potentiality for creating meaning and greasing the wheels of knowledge production while simultaneously alerting the public to the existence of their history.

Left: Fehras Publishing Practices: Sami Rustom, Kenan Darwich, Omar Nicolas.
© Fehras Publishing Practices

Right: Zeina Maasri
© Zeina Maasri

Visualising the archive: Arabic publishing during the Cold War

On Tuesday 25 May at 17:00 BST (register via Zoom) Zeina Maasri, senior lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton, will speak alongside Berlin-based artist collective Fehras Publishing Practices (Sami Rustom, Omar Nicolas and Kenan Darwich) about their respective projects on Arabic publishing during the Cold War.

In her talk The Visual Politics and Poetics of Arabic Publishing, Maasri will explore Beirut’s development from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s as a nexus of transnational Arab artistic encounter, intellectual debate and political contestation, which was marked by anticolonial struggle and complicated by a cold war order. Central to this nodal configuration was the city’s infrastructure of printing, Arabic publishing and distribution that sparked creative collaborations between various Arab artists, intellectuals and militants who crossed paths in Beirut. These transnational circuits have materialised in some of the pioneering modernist Arabic cultural periodicals of the period, as well as in politically radical publishing projects that summoned revolutionary change and solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. Her talk centres the visuality and materiality of Arabic publications as important sites of aesthetic experimentation and as reproducible and mobile artefacts of print culture. She argues that the translocal visuality of such Arabic printscapes helped articulate political imaginaries, mobilize cross-border identifications and shape aesthetic sensibilities in and through the disjunctive flows of the global sixties.

Likewise, through their project Borrowed Faces, Fehras Publishing Practices focuses on the Cold War era as one of the most fertile and critical periods in the history of Arab culture and publishing because of the entanglement between politics and culture. Their ongoing project researches cultural policies, and intellectual hegemony pursued by the bipolar power, the United States and the Soviet Union, and their establishment of institutions to fund international networks, conferences and projects. It observes the transformation of culture and publishing in the region from within, where new literary styles and ideas started to emerge. At the core of these movements were publishers, writers, poets, and translators, some of whom established collectives and seminars or who launched initiatives, publications, and publishing houses. Borrowed Faces looks into this period by observing the common denominators between cultural practices then and today. Pursuing these lines of inquiry, the project digs into print archives from the 1950s and 60s, such as books, magazines, memoirs, personal letters, newspaper articles, and photographs.

Left: Exhibition view, Past Disquiet, Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebanon, July 27-October 1, 2018.
Photograph: Christopher Baaklini, Courtesy: Sursock Museum.

Right: Refqa Abu-Remaileh
© Refqa Abu-Remaileh

Fragmented archives and histories of solidarity

The final session in the series on Tuesday 8 June at 17:00 (register via Zoom) brings together Refqa Abu-Remaileh and Kristine Khouri to speak about their respective archival and curatorial projects.

In her talk  A Database for Palestinian Literature, Abu-Remaileh will share the work-in-progress of the ERC project PalREAD-Country of Words. Focusing on PalREAD’s use of digital tools, the talk will discuss the challenges and joys of tracing and mapping a highly fragmented and scattered history of Palestinian literary production in Arabic from the early 20th century to the present spanning a multiplicity of geographical locations around the globe.

Researcher and writer Kristine Khouri’s talk Reflections on the (Digital) Future(s) of Past Disquiet focuses on her decade long research project conducted with Rasha Salti which took the form of an archival and documentary exhibition, publication, and seminars and other discursive events. The project investigated the histories of art collections and museums built in solidarity with political causes for Palestine, Chile, Nicaragua and South Africa as well as unearthed histories of transnational artistic solidarity networks of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial liberation struggles from the 1960s to the 1990s. While the exhibition presented the research in the form of text, digital surrogates of archival and other materials, video montages of interviews with participants and other testimonies and film and other footage, the exhibition did not exhibit any artwork. Today, over a decade later, the question remains on how to treat the digital archive which has been built throughout the project, gathering surrogates of documents held primarily in private homes or difficult to find ephemera of histories that have yet to be properly written. The talk will explore some of the reflections and challenges in thinking about the digital (and other) afterlives of Past Disquiet and ways to imagine encouraging further research.

Full abstracts and speaker biographies for the series can be found here. For any further enquiries please email Hana Sleiman and Daniel Lowe.

Hana Sleiman, Research Fellow in History, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge
Daniel Lowe, Curator, Arabic Collections

This guest blog is by Pragya Dhital, a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen Mary University London. Her research concerns the British Library’s collection of publications proscribed in colonial India between 1907-1947, one of the largest archives of primary sources relating to any twentieth-century decolonization movement, a catalogue of which is now online. In this blog Pragya writes about her research on proscribed pamphlets, and a parallel collection of political pamphlets collected by the British author, George Orwell.

“For plugging the holes in history the pamphlet is the ideal form”
George Orwell, ‘Pamphlet Literature’, 9 January 1943

In a 1943 article for the New Statesman and Nation George Orwell regretted the surprising “badness of contemporary pamphlets”. From a survey of his own library he identified nine main trends, ranging from “Anti-Left and crypto-Fascist” to “Lunatic”, and described them as “practically all trash, interesting only to bibliographies”. This was surprising as “the pamphlet ought to be the literary form of an age like our own”, Orwell argued; a time “when political passions run high, channels of free expression are dwindling, and organized lying exists on a scale never before known”. Perhaps for this reason Orwell remained a keen collector of pamphlets, acquiring more than 2700 published from 1915-45. At his request this collection was donated to the British Museum Library in 1955 by his widow, Sonia Orwell, and is now held by the British Library.

Angāre, [Burning coals], nine Urdu short stories and a play satirizing religious conservatism and colonial rule, edited and published by Sajjad Zaheer, who was later to co-found the Progressive Writers’ Movement. The white letters of the title are arranged right-to-left between flickering red flames on a black background. (Lucknow, 1932). British Library, PIB 47/17

Around the same time that these texts were being published, the Government of India was acquiring its own collection of political literature. The British Library’s archive of publications proscribed in colonial India consists of more than 2800 items banned between 1907-1947. Details for 1607 of the items are listed in the catalogue by Graham Shaw and Mary Lloyd, Publications Proscribed by the Government of India (London: British Library, 1985), now accessible online. The catalogue includes brief summaries of contents and biographies of the authors of these texts. Shaw and Lloyd’s introduction provides useful information about how they came to be proscribed and collected, building upon earlier work done by Norman Gerald Barrier. The catalogue is a valuable resource for scholars of modern South Asian history, politics and literature, and anyone interested in understanding the period during which this material was banned.

The British Library collection of proscribed Indian publications is particularly rich in pamphlets. Newspapers and magazines were also censored, and one of the main instruments for proscribing literature was the 1910 Press Act. But periodicals were much harder to systematically collect and store. The same qualities that made pamphlets handy containers of seditious material – the ease with which they are carried and concealed – also made them easier for the state to archive.

Merī ātmakathā, [My life story] Irish revolutionary, Dan Breen’s My fight for Irish freedom translated into Hindi by revolutionary martyr Bhagat Singh. Fingers pointing to Dan Breen (left) and Bhagat Singh (right) distinguish the two be-hatted young men. (N.p.: n.pub, 1931). British Library, PIB 27/35

Orwell identified the “flexible” nature of the pamphlet form as uniquely suiting it to the urgent task of documenting “the events of our times”. This flexibility also makes it hard to identify its distinctive features, provoking the question, what exactly is a pamphlet? The UNESCO recommendation concerning international standardization of statistics relating to books and periodicals, defines the pamphlet as “a non-periodical printed publication of at least 5 but not more than 48 pages, exclusive of the cover pages, published in a particular country and made available to the public”. This excludes much of the literature in the proscribed publications collection, which is longer or shorter, sought to evade the attention of the censor, and circulated internationally.

Āzādī ke dīvāne [Freedom’s Ecstatics], biographies in Hindi of various freedom fighters from the 1857 Great Rebellion to the Independence struggle. On the cover a portrait of Kunwar Singh (centre left), a leader of the Rebellion, is juxtaposed with that of Ashfaqulla Khan (centre right), member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army. [Not in the catalogue.] British Library, PIB 22/6

Looking for a definition that better encompasses this material, I turned to etymologies and historical precedents. The Hindi-Urdu terms pustikā, patrikā and risālah describe the pamphlet as a diminutive form of the book (pustak), extension of the letter (patra) and as bearer of a ‘message’ (risālah, related to rasūl, ‘messenger’ in Hindi-Urdu). European language equivalents such as chapbook, bibliothèque bleue, pliegos de cordel and Volksbuch emphasise how pamphlets were produced, distributed and received: the peddlers who sold them, cheap blue paper in which they were wrapped, string from which they hung, and the popular audience to whom they were addressed. I incorporate these aspects to include under the term pamphlet a wider range of short-form non-periodical literature: speeches, poems, plays and various ‘calls’ addressed to specific audiences – soldiers, policemen, farmers, women and youth. As well as reading their contents I pay attention to their material qualities and the ways in which they were disseminated.

Many of these works were multimedia texts, meant to be sung, recited or spoken, and involved an interactive relationship between performer and audience. “Read and read out loud” is a message that often appears on the proscribed publications; a sign of the influence of missionary publishing on these proselytising texts, from the use of new print technology to adoption of practices such as street preaching and itinerating that accompanied distribution of Christian tracts. These modes of textual transmission were more like gift exchange than reading, and did not require literacy on the part of their recipients.

Aṅgrezoṃ kī-bolatī-banda [The English Shut Up], nationalistic songs in Hindi published by Babu Ram Dauneriya. Both cover and contents suggest a theatrical revue. (Jaitpur Kalan [Agra], 1930?) British Library, PIB 21/5A

Much of this literature was also meant to be seen. In appealing to a mass audience, the creators of these texts drew upon a wide range of visual styles; India being a context in which multidenominational religious iconography and Anglo-European traditions of popular print are well known. [PIB 98]. The simple line drawings, chromolithographs and halftone photos in these texts often use Hindu imagery, and this has been the focus of previous studies of the proscribed publications collection. But these illustrations also appropriate the politically potent forms of the imperial portrait and police mugshot [PIB 22/6]. The use of Russian constructivist design principles in the red, white and black colour scheme and experimental use of typography in the proscribed publications is common to literature distributed in de-colonizing countries across the world. Some of this material was produced with Soviet funding – something prominently mentioned on the cover of the Urdu translation of the Communist Manifesto amongst the proscribed publications.

Kamyūniṣt mainīfesṭo; ishtimālī manshūr [Communist Manifesto. Soviet Published], Urdu translation of the Communist Manifesto. (Lahore: Maktabah-i Urdu, 1939). British Library, PIB 186

The audience for this literature may not have been literate, let alone “pamphlet-conscious” in the sense required by Orwell in his essay on the form. Their authors might well fit his description of “lonely lunatics who publish at their own expense”, or adherents of “crank religions” and political parties who lacked the necessary soundness and independence of mind needed to write a good pamphlet in his view. Writing under conditions of surveillance and censorship, they would have struggled to meet Orwell’s ideal: a pamphlet written by a “good writer with something he passionately wanted to say” read by as many people as possible. But precisely because of these limits the proscribed pamphlets reveal much about the anxieties of the colonial state, and the tactics deployed by nationalists to subvert restrictions on permissible speech.

Hama bhūkhe-naṅge kyoṃ haiṃ? [Why are we hungry and naked?], an account of the evils of British imperialism, the first of a planned series of political pamphlets to be written in simple Hindi for a readership of peasants and workers. (Kanpur: Mazdur-Kisan Pustak-Mala Karyalaya, 1935). British Library, PIB 98

Art is not the same as “cerebration” Orwell concludes in “Good Bad Books”, his essay on the appeal of a type of book with “no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished”. Orwell was aware that this was a quality ‘good bad books’ shared with propaganda and counterpropaganda; texts in the Orwell and proscribed publication collections also gain power from being pitched at a ‘non-cerebral’ level. One of the only pamphlets that he praises in his 1943 survey is H.V. Morton’s I, James Blunt, “a Good flesh-creeper” written in response to “the justified assumption that the mass of the English people haven’t yet heard of Fascism”. Morton’s account of Britain under German occupation was commissioned by the Ministry of Information, and resembles some of the more sensationalistic proscribed texts in both tone and fictional format. (Although the latter’s descriptions of foreign occupation refer to the past and present rather than speculate about a dystopian future.) Its conceit also looks forward to Orwell’s own Nineteen Eighty-Four, whose depiction of totalitarianism responded to Soviet Communism and National Socialism, and emerged from Orwell’s direct experience of “the dirty work of Empire” as a colonial police officer in Burma. Good or bad, read side-by-side and separately, pamphlets in the two collections continue to fill ‘holes’ in understandings of how global war and nationalist foment played out in colony and ‘metropole’.

Orwell’s copy of The Wisdom of Gandhi. This collection of Gandhi’s writings has been inscribed by its editor, Roy Walker, “To George Orwell – who seems to need it”. (London: Andrew Dakers Limited, 1943). British Library, 1899.ss.1-21

Pragya Dhital
I am grateful to the Bibliographic Society for a grant to acquire a scan of the Proscribed Publications catalogue, and to Catherine Eagleton and Hamish Todd for giving me access to the collection.

Pragya Dhital has written two previous blogs on this collection for the British Library - Inflammable material (2017) and  Insurgency in the archives (2018) - and edited a special section of History Workshop Journal (2020).

This guest blog post is by Souvik Mukherjee, an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of English at Presidency University in Kolkata. His research looks at the narrative and the literary through the emerging discourse of videogames as storytelling media and at how these games inform and challenge our conceptions of narratives, identity and culture. 

Salman Rushdie, in his novel, Midnight’s Children, writes about the game of Snakes and Ladders that ‘all games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate’ (Rushdie 2016, 160). Whether Rushdie is aware one does not know but Snakes and Ladders indeed has its beginnings as a game of morals, or even more than that – a game about life and karma. When Frederick Henry Ayres, the famous toymaker from Aldgate, London, patented the game in 1892, the squares of the game-board had lost their moral connotations. There were earlier examples in Victorian England and mainland Europe that had a very Christian morality encoded into the boards but the game actually originated in India as Gyan Chaupar (it had other local variations such as Moksha Pat, Paramapada Sopanam and other adaptations such as the Bengali Golok Dham and the Tibetan Sa nam lam sha). Victorian versions of the game include the Kismet boardgame (c.a. 1895) now in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection (fig. 1). There were other similar games such as Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished (1818) and the New Game of Human Life (1790) although the latter did not contain snakes and ladders on its board.

Fig. 1. Kismet, c.1895. Chromolithograph on paper and card. Designed in England, manufactured in Bavaria. Victoria & Albert Museum, MISC.423-1981. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

    In the Indian versions, it was not a racing-game as it became in its Western adaptations. It was a game that did not end in square hundred but one that people could play over and over until they reached Vaikuntha (the sacred domain of Vishnu) after journeying though many rebirths and corresponding human experiences. Every square in the game signified a moral action, a celestial location or a state of being all of which were important in the Karmic journey. Here is the story of two game-boards in the British Library’s archives and how an Indian game designed to teach the workings of Karma and religion became the Snakes and Ladders that children play the world over, today.

    One of the oldest Gyan Chaupar boards that have been traced so far is now in the British Library (Topsfield 1985, 203-226), originally in the collection of the East India Company officer Richard Johnson (1753-1807) (fig. 2). There are claims that the game originated much earlier – in the Kridakaushalya section of his 1871 Sanskrit magnum opus Brihad Jyotish Arnava, Venkatarama Harikrishna of Aurangabad states that the game was invented by the Marathi saint Dnyaneshwar (1275 – 1296). Andrew Topsfield lists around forty-four game-boards in his two articles published two decades apart and these boards belong to multiple religious traditions, Hindu, Jain and Muslim (Sufi). Topsfield mentions older boards that date back to the late 15^th century and also ones that have 128 squares, 84 squares or a 100 squares instead of the 72 squares as on the Johnson board. There is, however, another board in the British Library that has probably not been written about yet. Listed as the Paramapada Sopanam Pata (fig. 3), it is described in the catalogue as: ‘Lithograph in Blockwood printing. of the game Paramapada sōpānam, a traditional Indian indoor game: in a chart titled: Paramapada Sopanam, in which the highest ascent indicates reaching Heaven and anywhere else where the pawn lands indicate various worlds according to Hindu mythology. Language note: In Kannada and Devanagari’. These two boards tell the story of the transculturation of a game that started out as a pedagogical tool to teach the ways of karma and ended up as Hasbro Inc.’s Chutes and Ladders.

Designs for a game of snakes and ladders, gyan chaupur, commissioned by Richard Johnson, Lucknow, 1780-82. Johnson Album 5,8. 

Paramapada Sopanam Pata, board game printed in Karnataka, c. 1800-1850. British Library, ORB 40/1046.

    Around 1832, a Captain Henry Dundas Robertson would present what he called the Shastree’s Game of Heaven and Hell to the Royal Asiatic Society in London where the 128-square Vaishnav Gyan Chaupar board can still be seen. Around 1895, when the game was being sold in England as a children’s game, the civil servant Gerald Robert Dampier was sending a detailed report on the game to North Indian Notes and Queries. Around a century before Dampier and fifty years before Robertson, Richard Johnson’s possession of a Gyan Chaupar board around 1780-2 is in itself a curious affair. This board is now part of the British Library’s collection. Johnson, the deputy resident at Lucknow, is among the lesser-known Orientalists despite his prodigious collection of Indian art and his close connection with orientalists of greater repute such as Sir William Jones. Johnson was supposedly a competent official but he made a fortune through corruption and was called ‘Rupee Johnson’; he was also involved in Warren Hastings’s infamous looting of the Begums of Oudh. In his two years in Oudh (1780-82) Johnson was, however, seems to have been popular and was given the title Mumtāz al-Dawlah Mufakhkhar al-Mulk Richārd Jānsan Bahādur Ḥusām Jang, 1194 or ʻRichard Johnson chosen of the dynasty, exalted of the kingdom, sharp blade in war’, 1780 together with a mansab and an insignia by the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam. Johnson was also an eclectic collector and commissioned work by many Indian artists and scholars  of which 64 albums of paintings (over 1,000 individual items) and an estimated 1000 manuscripts in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Sanskrit, Bengali, Panjabi, Hindi and Assamese form the ‘backbone of the East India Company library’ (now at the British Library, see Sims-Williams 2014). While other orientalists such as Jones and Hiram Cox wrote on Chess, Johnson seems to have been interested in other games. Besides the Gyan Chaupar board, the Johnson collection contains the Persian game of Ganj (Treasure) and sketches for Ganjifa cards – the round playing cards that were common in India before the advent of European cards (British Library, Johnson Album 5).

    Johnson’s contribution to boardgame studies is no less important than that of the other orientalists although it has taken over two centuries to appreciate this. The Gyan Chaupar board was in his possession a good century before the game was imported to the West and transformed into a race-game. Johnson seems to have been interested in the original game and besides the Devanagari script, each square also contains a farsi transliteration. The words are not Persian but the script is.[i] It is difficult to identify the painter or the source – Malini Roy points out that ‘artists affiliated with Johnson’s studio include Mohan Singh, Ghulam Reza, Gobind Singh, Muhammad Ashiq, Udwat Singh, Sital Das, and Ram Sahai’ (Roy 2010, 181). Whether Johnson read the game-board is a moot question but he certainly cared to get the words transliterated into Persian. Beginning the game on utpatti or ‘origin’, the player can move to maya or ‘illusion’ (square 2), krodh or lobh – ‘anger’ and ‘greed’ respectively (squares 3 and 4) and ascend higher towards salvation via the ladders in the squares that represent daya or mercy (square 13) or Bhakti or devotion (square 54). Bhakti will take the player directly to Vaikuntha and salvation from the cycle of rebirths and the game ends here. For a game purportedly invented by a major figure of the Bhakti Movement, this is no surprise. If the throw of the dice takes the player beyond square 68, then the long snake on square 72 brings the player back to Earth and the cycle of rebirths continues. Johnson’s board is unique among the Gyan Chaupar boards that are known to scholars in that it contains two scorpions in addition to the snakes and the ladders also look somewhat serpentine.

    One more detail is not obvious from the board. None of these boards comes with playing pieces or dice but writing in 1895, Dampier claims that the game was played with cowrie shells as dice and he also adds that the game is ‘very contrary to our Western teachings […] it is not clear why Love of Violence (sq. 72) should lead to Darkness (sq. 51)’. Dampier notes that the game has been ‘lately introduced in England and with ordinary dice for cowries and [with] a somewhere revised set of rules been patented there as a children’s game’ (Dampier 1895, 25-27).

    Dampier’s short but detailed account of Gyan Chaupar provides a clearer entry point into how and why an ‘oriental’ game of karma needed to be Westernised as a children’s game. The transition from the karmic game to the game on Christian morality and then to a race-game for children embodying competition rather than soul-searching is evident from his pithy notes sent to the journal North Indian Notes and Queries. One might assume that the principles working here would have been very different from Johnson’s approach to the game. The story, nevertheless, does not end here. I was fortunate to discover another game-board in the British Library as I mention above. The Paramapada Sopanam or the Ladder to Heaven is similar to the Johnson board in most ways except that there are only snakes on the board. Some snakes help the player ascend and the others are for descent (I purposely eschew terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ here). Square 54 or Bhakti, a many-headed serpent leads the player to Vaikuntha (the board is damaged here) and one might assume that it is Ananta, the celestial snake on which Vishnu reclines. There are some differences with the Johnson board although both relate to the Vaishnav sect of Hinduism. While Gyan Chaupar is largely forgotten in Northern India (except in the Jain tradition where it is reportedly played by some during the Jain festival Paryushan), Paramapada Sopanam is regularly played on the festive day of Vaikuntha Ekadasi in the Indian states of Telengana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. In fact, Carl Gustav Jung supposedly obtained a copy of the game when he visited Tamil Nadu in 1938 and took it back to Zurich; Sulagna Sengupta concludes that Jung read the matrix of the game as the play of opposites in the psyche (Sengupta 2017).

    From the karmic game to Jung’s model for the play of psychological opposites, Gyan Chaupar in its many forms is certainly much more than the race game that it has been changed into after its appropriation by the colonial apparatus. Recent research has been able to identify many of these game-boards and these two boards in the British Library are crucial for the ‘recovery research’ into Gyan Chaupar and its variants as well as the cultures in which they were conceived. Recent research on games talks of ‘gamification’ or the application of ludic principles to real-life activities – a closer look at the original Gyan Chaupar will show its merit as a gamified text, an instructional manual on the ways of life and on Indic soteriology.

Notes
[i] I am indebted to Ms Azadeh Mazlousaki Isaksen of the University of Tromso, Norway, for the translations. Ms Isaksen initially struggled to translate the words as she found them unfamiliar. The reason was that these were Hindi or Sanskrit words written in the Persian script.

Bibliography
Cannon, Garland, and Andrew Grout. “Notes and Communications.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 55, no. 2, 1992, pp. 316–318. 

Dampier, Gerald Roberts. “A Primitive Game.” North Indian Notes and Queries V (1895): p. 25-27.

Roy, Malini. “Origins of the Late Mughal Painting Tradition in Awadh.” India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow. Ed. Stephen Markel and Tushara Bindu Gude. Los Angeles: Prestel, 2010.

Rushdie, Salman. Midnights Children. London: Random House, 2016.

Sengupta, Sulagna. “Parama Pada Sopanam : The Divine Game of Rebirth and Renewal.” Jungian Perspectives on Rebirth and Renewal: Phoenix Rising. Ed. Elizabeth Brodersen and Michael Glock. London ; New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

Sims-Williams, Ursula. “‘White Mughal’ Richard Johnson and Mir Qamar al-Din Minnat.” British Library Asian and African Studies Blog, 1 May 2014.

Topsfield, Andrew. “The Indian Game of Snakes and Ladders.” Artibus Asiae, vol. 46, no. 3, 1985, pp. 203–226. 

By Dr. Souvik Mukherjee