The previous blog post in this series on the provenance of the Colebrooke Collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Library related how Colebrooke, along with the pandits Citrapati and Bābūrāma, became entangled in accusations of corruption. This final blog post evaluates the Colebrooke Collection.

Colebrooke arrived back in Britain in 1815 and devoted most of the remainder of his life to scholarly pursuits. Accompanying him was his collection of manuscripts which, in 1819, he offered to the directors of the East India Company for their library in London. The directors accepted Colebrooke’s offer, and sent a letter expressing their gratitude:

Sir,   
I have had the honour to convey to you by command of the Court of Directors of the East India Company their thanks, for the valuable collection of Oriental manuscripts which you obligingly presented for their acceptance and which, they have ordered to be placed in the Library at this House under the denomination of the “Colebrooke Collection.”   
I have now the honour to express to you the wish of the Court to have your bust for the purpose of being placed in the Company’s Library as an appropriate accompaniment to that Collection.
(Letter from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to Colebrooke, 13 May 1819. IOR/E/1/255/633).

Colebrooke assented, and the bust was executed by Sir Francis Chantrey (1781–1841). At the time of this commission, Chantrey had built a reputation as Britain’s leading portrait sculptor. Among the people he had depicted in portrait busts were famous figures of the time, including Horatio Nelson, William Pitt, James Watt, and Sir Joseph Banks. He had also completed several major public commissions, including monuments in St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, and a statue of King George III which was installed in the Guildhall, London.

This was not the first commission Chantrey had received from the East India Company, and he would collaborate with them throughout his career, producing statues and monuments to prominent Company representatives for display in both Britain and India. This was therefore a high honour for Colebrooke, and testifies to the esteem in which he was held by the directors.

Henry Thomas Colebrooke, draped bust. Sculpted by Francis Chantrey in 1820. British Library, Foster 435.

In 1982, the collections of the India Office Library (as it was then called), were deposited with the British Library. When the BL was moved to its present site, in St Pancras, the bust of Colebrooke was placed at the entrance to the Asian and African Reading Room, where it stands today.

In contrast, when it comes to the pandits who had originally produced the manuscripts in the Colebrooke Collection, we are left without any visual record. Indeed, it is difficult to find portraits of any pandits from this period, and those we do have rarely depict identifiable individuals.

Watercolour of a man with inscription reading ‘Pundit.’ British Library, Add Or 999.

For example, this watercolour painting, with the inscription ‘pundit’, was produced in Calcutta in 1805. Images like this were produced by local artists for Western patrons, and were mostly taken back to Britain. This is from a set of sixteen paintings, each one featuring a different personality, including a Muslim ascetic, a water carrier, a dancing girl, a Georgian man, and several soldiers. As the variety of this list suggests, these were not paintings of specific individuals, but rather general types or occupations of people who were considered novel or interesting to a Western audience. We are therefore left with only generalised portraits of ‘typical’ pandits, and little sense of them as individuals.

In these blogs we have been able to recover something of the stories, and even occasionally the voices, of two of Colebrooke’s pandits: Citrapati and Bābūrāma. They lived during a period when the EIC was trying to establish itself as a competent government in South Asia and were in need of pandits to teach them the local languages and customs, and to help them establish systems of administration adapted to local needs. This brought opportunities for pandits in the service of the new rulers. However, as the case of Citrapati shows, their position was insecure. Pandits were often distrusted by the British, and in an atmosphere of scandal and suspicion, they could easily be made a scapegoat.

Two years after arriving back in Britain, Colebrooke published Algebra, with Arithmetic and Mensuration, from the Sanscrit of Brahmegupta and Bhàscara, a work based in large part on a manuscript first copied for him by Citrapati in 1790. Citrapati and Bābūrāma had joined Colebrooke early in his career and were responsible for collecting, copying, and compiling a large part of his collection. Bābūrāma had also acted as librarian for Colebrooke, and produced the first catalogue of the collection.

Figures like Citrapati and Bābūrāma are central to the stories behind many of the BL’s Asian and African collections, and it is important that these stories are uncovered and given the prominence they deserve. There are certainly challenges involved - unlike their British counterparts, pandits were not commemorated for their collecting or scholarship, and they did not have the status of those, like Colebrooke, whose voices and activities were regularly recorded in the official archive. However, traces do remain. In particular, the India Office Records and Private Papers contain a wealth of material, through which we can piece together something of the backgrounds, voices, and achievements of these figures. Pursuing this sort of provenance research is vital if we are to have a more complete picture of the British Library’s collections.

This is the fifth in a series of five blog posts on the provenance of the Colebrooke collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Library. The first post introduced the Colebrooke family and the East India Company; the second post focused on Colebrooke's manuscripts on Hindu law; the third on Colebrooke and the pandits; while the fourth considered accusations of corruption against Colebrooke and his pandits.

Works Consulted
Colebrooke, Thomas Edward, The Life of H. T. Colebrooke (London: Trübner, 1873).
Letter from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to H. T. Colebrooke, 13 May 1819. British Library, IOR/E/1/255/633.
Francis Legatt Chantrey (artist), draped bust of Henry Thomas Colebrooke, 1820. British Library, Foster 435.
Watercolour of a man with inscription reading ‘Pundit.’ British Library, Add Or 999 (Part of a set of sixteen drawings bound into a volume depicting occupations in Bengal, c. 1805. British Library, Add Or 993-1008

David Woodbridge, Provenance Researcher Sanskrit Collections (REAP pilot project 2023-2025)

Historical background: Mamluk and Mongol military rivalries in the 13th century 

The Mongol army’s capture of the ‘Abbasid capital of Baghdad in 1258 was a pivotal moment in Middle Eastern history. After the dust of this battle had settled, the pillaging and destruction of the city’s libraries became a literary trope, amplified in Arab historiography and cultural memory. 

One of the lesser-known as aspects of this famous conquest is the participation of the army of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Anticipating the Mongols’ dominance, the Kingdom had entered into an unequal political alliance – more accurately a vassalage – with them, against their mutual enemies, the newly-established Mamluk rulers of Egypt. The Armenian king Hethum I (1213-1270) himself travelled to Mongolia to pledge his services and be recognised for his loyalty.

Hethum I (seated) in the Mongol court of Karakorum, 'receiving the homage of the Mongols', from a manuscript copy of La flor des estoires d'Orient (Fleur des histoires de la terre d'Orient), by Hayton/Hethum of Corycus (nephew of King Hethum I of Armenia), composed in 1307 CE (British Library Add MS 17971, f. 23r).

Equine medicine in war and peace 

Against this historical backdrop, a text recently catalogued for the British Library-Qatar Foundation Project in two copies (Or. 9823, dating to c. 15th century; and Or. 3133, copied 1854), contains historical perspectives on the looting of Baghdad’s caliphal library and the complex nature of Armenian political relationships in the 13th century. On a more intimate level, it also hints at the tale of a nameless Armenian surgeon; an otherwise anonymous prisoner of war whose linguistic and medical prowess gave him a tiny footnote in the history of equestrian medicine in the Middle East.  

This text, elaborately entitled The Matching Pearls Concerning the Knowledge of Precedents (al-Durr al-muṭābiq fī ʻilm al-sawābiq) in Or. 9823 and Formulary of equine medical science (Aqrābādhīn fī ʻilm ṭibb al-khayl) in Or. 3133, is a manual on the characteristics of horses and the treatment of equine diseases and injuries, in 182 or 183 short chapters.  

The work’s preamble and the beginning of the first chapter relate piecemeal a convoluted and rather confusing transmission history. This account, which varies in small but important details in different extant copies, explains that the text had originally been encountered in the Armenian language, and contained many pharmacological terms that could not be understood, until ‘a surgeon from among the captives with understanding of the terminology was found, who translated it into Arabic – that man was valued and expert in his craft.’

Introduction and start of first chapter of al-Durr al-muṭābiq fī ʻilm al-sawābiq (British Library Or. 3133, f. 1v).

The text goes on to state that ‘the Armenian king, in the service of the [now-]vanquished enemy [the Mongols], had taken the Arabic book from the library of the caliphal treasury in Baghdad, and translated it into the Armenian pen (‘qalam’, in Or 9823, or ‘took it to the Armenian realm [‘iqlīm’, in Or 3133] […] during the reign of Baybars’ (Mamluk sultan, ruled 1260-77).  

(British Library Or. 9823, f. 3r) 

The books of horsemanship and characteristics of horses  

The importance of horses to the Mongols and Mamluks, as to most medieval societies, and therefore the desirability of having the best possible understanding of their care and breeding, can hardly be understated. The wealth of Arabic manuals on horsemanship, equestrian medicine, and on animal care in general copied over many centuries makes this clear. 

According to the version of the Armenian translator-surgeon’s explanation related in the text’s preface, it is a compilation of the tried and tested hippiatric knowledge of a certain wise individual, Muḥammad ibn al-Khalīfah [‘son of the Caliph’] Yaʻqūb. Given the content and structure of the Formulary, this name appears to be a corruption of Muḥammad ibn Yaʻqūb ibn Akhī Ḥizām, a famous horse trainer who, over 350 years earlier in Baghdad, had worked for the ʻAbbasid caliph al-Mu‘taḍid (ruled 892-902), and was the author of a voluminous and highly influential early Arabic hippiatric treatise, The book of horsemanship and characteristics of horses [or: and veterinary science] (Kitāb al-furūsīyah wa-shiyāt al-khayl [wa-al-bayṭarah]). 

The horse's good (ff. 22v-23r, left) and bad (ff. 62v-63r, right) points, from a copy of Kitāb al-bayṭarah, an abridgement of Kitāb al-furūsīyah wa-l-bayṭarah by Muḥammad ibn Yaʻqūb Ibn Akhī Ḥizām, attributed to Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn ‘Atīq al-Azdī, dated 1223 CE. (British Library Or. 1523)

Consisting of two main parts subdivided into numerous short bābs, over the centuries Ibn Akhī Ḥizām’s Kitāb al-furūsīyah was abbreviated, edited, and translated under a wide variety of titles, with the name of its author frequently appearing in corrupted forms.i The text in Or. 9823 and Or. 3133 seems to be one of these spin-off works. But how did this Armenian surgeon – it is uncertain whether his expertise was as a horse veterinarian – find himself in the situation of back-translating the text into Arabic?  

Other names are also mentioned, further confusing the picture: a ‘philosopher’ named Saʻd al-Dīn ibn al-Ẓāhir al-ʻAjamī (‘the foreigner’ or ‘the Persian’) who participated in the composition of the text, and two individuals, Maḥbūb and his companion Abū al-Faraj, who translated it into Armenian (although the BL copies describe them working ‘from’ Armenian, this does not make sense, and another more detailed copy (Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Ms. Orient. A 2087, f. 8v), has them working ‘into’ Armenian). 

 

Translating on the battlefield 

After repelling the Mongols in 1260 at the battle of ʻAyn Jalūt, the Mamluks retaliated against the Mongols’ Armenian allies with a punitive campaign culminating in August 1266 at the Battle of Meri, where the Armenian army was defeated, the land pillaged, and many civilians subsequently enslaved. Could this have been the occasion of the text’s and/or the surgeon’s capture? Someone with medical skill and linguistic aptitude would have been a useful captive for the triumphant Mamluks, and a useful manual on horse care carried by a soldier or by the army’s veterinary retinue could have been part of the booty. 

However, the introduction to Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Ms. Orient. A 2087 additionally mentions the second battle of Homs of 19 Rajab 680 AH/ 3 November 1281 CE, when Mamluk forces under Sultan Qālāwūn (ruled 1279-90) again defeated the Mongols along with their Armenian military supporters. The Gotha copy describes how the Mamluk commander (and later, sultan) Lājīn assembled a group of Armenian prisoners to translate the book, but they could not understand all its pharmaceutical terminology, whereupon the surgeon was found (f. 2r). 

The Battle of Homs of 1281 in La flor des estoires d'Orient (Fleur des histoires de la terre d'Orient). (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS 886, f. 27v [detail]).

 

Prisoner of history: the captured surgeon 

Either way, this text conjures a melancholy picture of the unfortunate surgeon, imprisoned in an encampment on the plains of Syria. forcibly thrust into the spotlight and obliged to transmit to his captors the secrets of this text on horses. However, probably unbeknown to them all at that moment, it had originally been composed in the same language it was now being translated into.  

And despite the inevitable realisation that the text was not a source of new knowledge but belonged to an already well-established tradition, the story of its transmission was clearly considered remarkable enough, even at the time, to have been preserved throughout its subsequent scribal history, right down to 1854, when Or 3133 was transcribed. 

Amuletic squares in British Library Or. 3133, f. 33r (left) and in British Library Or. 1523, f. 110v (right). 

Jenny Norton-Wright 
Arabic Scientific Manuscripts Curator, British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership 

 

Bibliography 

Dum-Tragut, Jasmine, Kilikische Heilkunst für Pferde – Das Vermächtnis der Armenier (Hildesheim: Editorial Olms Verlag, 2005)  

Hayton/Hethum of Corycus, La Flor des estoires de la terre d’Orient, esp Book III: 'On the Tatar nation', in Recueil des historiens des Croisades, Documents Armeniens, vol. 2, edited by Jean Dardel (1906; Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1841-1906), pp. 147-219. English translation available at: https://www.attalus.org/armenian/hetum3.htm#26. 

al-Sarraf, Shihab, 'Mamluk Furūsīyah Literature and Its Antecedents', Mamluk Studies Review 8 (2004), pp. 141-200 (esp. pp. 148-52) 

Sbath, Paul, 'Manuscrit arabe sur la pharmacopée hippiatrique', Bulletin de l'Institut d'Egypte 14 (1931-2), pp. 79-81 and plates i-iii 

Shehada, Housni Alkhateeb, Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 118-20 and 169-70 

 

See also the research project Encounter in the Corpus of the Horse: Cultural Transfer and Knowledge Transfer between the Christian West and the Muslim East in Late Mediaeval Armenian Equine Manuals (Begegnung im Körper des Pferdes. Kulturtransfer und Wissensvermittlung zwischen christlichem Westen und muslimischem Osten in spätmittelalterlichen armenischen Pferdebüchern), at the University of Salzburg (2022-25).

The previous blog post in this series on the provenance of the Colebrooke Collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Library examined the role of Indian ‘pandits’ in gathering the manuscripts. This blog outlines how Colebrooke, along with the pandits Citrapati and Bābūrāma, became entangled in accusations of corruption.

In 1807, Colebrooke was made a member of the supreme council of the Government of Bengal, a position he would hold until the end of 1812. He had established a reputation as both a capable administrator and a respected Sanskrit scholar, and his knowledge of Hindu law in particular had proven to be a great asset for the East India Company. However, at this time the EIC was still struggling to cast off its reputation as a rapacious corporation and present itself instead as a responsible administrator of British territories in India.

South East View of the New Government House of the East India Company in Calcutta, published in 1805 (British Library, P1685).

In the early years of the nineteenth century, a series of scandals led to the removal of several of the Company’s district judges. One of these was William Brodie who, in 1810, was suspended due to findings of corruption while he had been judge and magistrate of Purnia. The charges had centred on an inheritance dispute for which he had been accused of accepting a bribe from one of the parties. The allegations were made by a local landholder, Charles Reed, who had been representing one of the other parties in the dispute. The proceedings had dragged on, but Reed persisted, and after the verdict against Brodie was passed, Reed began making accusations against the higher-ranking members of the judiciary, who he believed had been obstructing his earlier efforts to bring Brodie to trial.

Colebrooke was one of those now in the firing line. When he had ascended to the supreme council, he had also taken on the role of chief judge of the superior court. Although his day-to-day involvement in the courts was limited, his reputation as an authority in Hindu law meant he was often consulted for his opinion. Charles Reed now accused him of misusing his authority, and Colebrooke vigorously defended himself. In the records of the proceedings of the supreme council we find a number of lengthy responses Colebrooke made to these allegations. He also gave up his position as chief judge, in an effort to prevent any future accusations.

The New Court House and Chandpal Ghaut, from a set of views of Calcutta, published in 1788 (British Library, P46).

However, Colebrooke’s efforts to protect himself would have implications for the pandits he had formerly employed. Citrapati, now pandit of the superior court, had earlier been called on to give an opinion on the inheritance dispute mentioned above. However, he was then accused of receiving a bribe from one of the parties. Charles Reed seized on Citrapati’s connections with Colebrooke in order to accuse the latter, and Colebrooke again sought to defend himself. In doing so, however, he left Citrapati exposed. In a supreme council meeting in February 1812, Colebrooke claimed that Citrapati had visited him at his home ‘with much apparent agitation’ to report the charge brought against him. Colebrooke recounted that he replied to Citrapati that ‘whatever explanation or vindication he had to offer… must be stated, not to me, but to the court before which the accusation has been preferred.’ He then ‘immediately dismissed him, and have forbidden his future visits to my house.’

Extract from Colebrooke’s Minute, presented to the Supreme Council at their meeting at Fort William on 10 February 1812 (British Library, IOR P/130/45, 10 February 1812, No. 19).

Citrapati was adamant that he had refused the offer of a bribe. However, he had not spoken of it until this time, and this, Colebrooke claimed, ‘indicates a way of thinking not accordant with the delicate and scrupulous integrity which should be expected from a person holding the office which he does’. Furthermore, he claimed, ‘it will constitute in my opinion a sufficient ground for his removal though he should be proved innocent of the charge.’ (IOR/P/130/45, 10 February 1812, No. 19). The rest of the council concurred, and Citrapati was immediately suspended, pending an investigation.

Bābūrāma also found himself embroiled in the allegations against Citrapati. In a statement made to the court, Citrapati claimed that, after he had refused the proffered bribe, the alleged briber tried to leave the money at Citrapati’s house, promising to collect it the next day. Citrapati refused this also and stated that: "I afterwards heard that having left them [the money] with Bābūrāma, whose house is at some distance from mine, he had departed, and that he had said to Bābūrāma that he would on the morrow send a man to fetch them; but next day no man came to take them away. On the day following, Bābūrāma took the money… and gave it to him" [i.e. back to the alleged briber] (IOR/P/130/45, 18 February 1812, No. 79).

Reed seized on this detail, asserting that the bribe had been ‘left in deposit with one of Mr Colebrooke’s servants’ and that ‘it will necessarily follow that Mr Colebrooke is guilty of a most heinous offence, equally so as if the money had been deposited for the joint benefit of himself and Citrapati’ (IOR/P/130/45, 10 February 1812, No. 20). Colebrooke sought to defend himself against this association, declaring: "The person mentioned as my servant and with whom the rejected bribe is said to have been afterwards for a short time deposited, is one who was formerly employed by me as a Sanskrit Copyist. He ceased to be employed by me in that capacity six or seven years ago, on his setting up a Sanskrit Press. But I have since continued to him a monthly allowance in consideration of his occasionally attending to sort and arrange my collection of oriental manuscripts. In this relation of service towards me, it was a great dereliction of duty to undertake, for a day, or for an hour, the custody of a deposit yet tainted with the corrupt destination it had borne though rejected."

He went on: "However mortifying it is to find that some at least, if not all these persons, are so undeserving of the favourable opinion I entertained of them, and that several of them happen by a vexatious coincidence to be persons who have been at some period in my service, I trust that my name has been in no shape mixed in their proceedings." (IOR/P/130/45, 10 February 1812, No. 21)

In a context in which the EIC was under close scrutiny from critics in Britain, Colebrooke was keen to protect himself from any suspicion of misconduct. However, this came at the expense of the pandits whose assistance had been vital to his achievements in India.

Several months passed following Citrapati’s suspension, and then in November 1812 his voice once more appears in the proceedings of the Government of Bengal. Citrapati submitted a petition to the Governor General, ending with a plea ‘that your Lordship in Council will deem it proper to clear from the false accusation a poor Pundit (your Petitioner) who is for a period of nine months oppressed under the suspension from his office, and at the same time will be pleased to extend your natural clemency towards him by pronouncing an order for reinstating him to his former situation’ (IOR/P/131/7, 14 November 1812, No. 21).

The ending of Citrapati’s petition to the Governor General of Bengal (IOR/P/131/7, 14 November 1812, No. 21).

Problems with locating the relevant witnesses meant that the enquiries into Citrapati’s case were again delayed. He submitted a further petition in February 1813, but to no avail. A year later, in March 1814, Citrapati died, and the investigation was never concluded. As for Bābūrāma, it is unclear whether Colebrooke continued to employ him as a librarian. But we know that his Sanskrit Press ceased to operate following Colebrooke’s departure from India, in 1814.

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts on the provenance of the Colebrooke collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Library. The first post introduced the Colebrooke family and the East India Company; the second post focused on Colebrooke's manuscripts on Hindu law and the third on Colebrooke and the pandits. The next, and final, blog in this series considers the legacies of Colebrooke and his pandits.

Works Consulted
Jha, Jagdish Chandra, ‘Some Light on the Early Judicial System of the East India Company’, The Journal of the Bihar Research Society Vol. LIII, Parts I-V (1967), pp. 214-223.
Rocher, Rosanne and Rocher, Ludo, The Making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company (London: Routledge, 2012).
Minute of H. T. Colebrooke, 17 December 1811 (Government of Bengal Proceedings 17 December 1811, No. 1). British Library, IOR/P/148/71.
Minute of H. T. Colebrooke, 6 February 1812 (Government of Bengal Proceedings 10 February 1812, No. 19). British Library, IOR/P/130/45.
Letter from Charles Reed to the Governor General, 7 February 1812 (Government of Bengal Proceedings 10 February 1812, No. 20). British Library, IOR/P/130/45.
Minute of H. T. Colebrooke, 7 February 1812 (Government of Bengal Proceedings 10 February 1812, No. 21). British Library, IOR/P/130/45.
Statement by Citrapati [D], 13 February 1812 (Government of Bengal Proceedings 18 February 1812, No. 79). British Library, IOR/P/130/45.
Petition of Citrapati (Government of Bengal Proceedings 14 November 1812, No. 21). British Library, IOR/P/131/7.

David Woodbridge, Provenance Researcher Sanskrit Collections (REAP pilot project 2023-2025)