Stories from Provenance Research: Records and Manuscripts Lost at Sea (Part 2): RMS Titanic
In a previous blog, I described how a volume of 17th century Surat records belonging to the Government of Bombay travelled backwards and forwards between India and London and was subsequently lost at sea in the wreck of the SS Oceana.
Just weeks later, on 15 April 1912, RMS Titanic famously sank in the waters of the North Atlantic, with the loss of over 1500 lives. Many notable books, paintings and artefacts were on board (including the ‘Titanic Omar’. But so too were fourteen Sanskrit manuscripts belonging to the Governmental Library, Deccan College Poona (Pune). These were on loan from the Government of Bombay and were en-route from the India Office in London to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. They had been borrowed by Franklin Edgerton, a budding Sanskrit scholar working under Professor Maurice Bloomfield.
In May 1911, Edgerton wrote to the India Office Library in London requesting assistance in locating and examining all copies of the Vikramacaritra, including those in India, for a critical study of the work. The Library was a hub for the loan of manuscript materials, particularly those in Persian, Arabic, and South Asian languages. It facilitated and arranged access to manuscripts in its own collections, to the Government of India’s collections, and to collections in European institutions, with the recipients being a wide range of academics and interested persons worldwide.
Letter forwarding manuscripts from Bombay to London February 1912 IOR/L/R/9/9
List of Sanskrit manuscripts to be loaned with values February 1912 IOR/L/R/9/9
The fourteen Sanskrit manuscripts were formally requested from Bombay and were despatched to the India Office Library in London to administer the loan, arriving in March 1912. As was usual practice, Edgerton paid a bond for the ‘value’ of the manuscripts, said to be Rs 303. The Library Committee proposed that Edgerton should only have three manuscripts in his possession at any one time, and the manuscripts were only to be loaned until 31 December 1912. Unfortunately, that did not mean staggering their despatch. They were parcelled up and sent via the forwarding agents Carter, Paterson & Co on 1 April, and placed aboard Titanic.
Letter informing the India Office of the loss of manuscripts on the Titanic April 1912 IOR/L/R/9/9
The India Office was informed of the loss on 17 April. The Librarian Frederick William Thomas was phlegmatic in telling the Library Committee: ‘The loss is regrettable, but it cannot be said that the Mss were exposed to any greater risk when despatched to America than when en-route from Bombay. The work contained in the 14 manuscripts was by no means a rare one, & it has been edited in print’. The India Office had insured the parcel and received £20 in compensation, which was passed to the Government of Bombay.
Librarian FW Thomas's report of the loss to the Library Committee May 1912 IOR/L/R/9/9
Franklin Edgerton went on to borrow more manuscripts and finally published his two volume work Vikrama's Adventures; or, the Thirty-two Tales of the Throne (Cambridge Mass; 1926). In the preface to the first volume he acknowledged both the assistance of the India Office Library, Librarian FW Thomas, and the loss of the Sanskrit manuscripts: ‘This terrible disaster deprived me of materials which would unquestionably have proved a great enrichment of the sources at my disposal for the edition; yet I cannot but recognise that my personal loss is small in comparison with the permanent loss of this large collection of manuscripts...’.
Lesley Shapland
Archivist & Provenance Researcher
India Office Records
Further reading:
Papers regarding loans to Dr Edgerton, including details of the loss of Sanskrit manuscripts on the Titanic can be found in IOR/L/R/9/9, L135/13: Library Committee Papers, 1913.