This is the second in a series of five blog posts on the provenance of the Colebrooke Collection of Sanskrit manuscripts now in the British Library, following the first post, which introduced the Colebrooke Family and the East India Company.

 

According to the historian Christopher Fleming, while in India, Colebrooke ‘assembled the world’s most extensive collection of Sanskrit legal manuscripts’ (Fleming 2021, p. 192). Why did he do this, and what is the story behind this?

 

Pages from Colebrooke’s copy of the Vyavahāratattva, a legal digest composed by the sixteenth-century scholar Raghunandana. These pages include Colebrooke’s own notes and translation. British Library, IO San 191c

 

Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837) arrived in India in 1783, while Warren Hastings was Governor General. In the preceding years, Hastings had been responsible for a range of reforms to the East India Company’s governance in India. One of the areas he focused on was the administration of justice. A new system of courts was set up, operating at local and regional levels and overseen by superior courts in Calcutta [Kolkata]. Though the judges were British, they were to try cases according to local law. Furthermore, in cases ‘regarding inheritance, marriage, and caste, and all religious usages and institutions’ this was to be tailored according to whether those appearing in the courts were of the Muslim or Hindu faith (IOR/V/8/15). To ensure this was done correctly, local law officers were appointed, and in the case of Hindu law, these officers were referred to as ‘pandits’.

 

For centuries it had been a practice in India for pandits who were experts in law to be consulted during legal disputes. The Company’s employment of them as law officers can therefore be seen as a continuation of this policy. At the same time, however, Hastings also sought to set down a standardised body of Hindu law ‘in order to render more complete the judicial regulations, to preclude arbitrary and partial judgements, and to guide the decisions of the several courts’ (IOR/E/4/31, f 447). A team of eleven pandits were commissioned to compile a suitable reference work, and a copy of their completed digest, titled Vivādārṇavasetu, can be found in the Colebrooke Collection (IO San 3145a). It was later translated, via Persian, into English as A Code of Gentoo Laws, or, Ordinations of the Pundits.

 

Front page of A Code of Gentoo Laws, or, Ordinations of the Pundits (London, 1776).  British Library, 26.i.6

 

Perceived deficiencies in Hasting’s code led to a new digest being commissioned, under the direction of the scholar and judge Sir William Jones. Again, pandits were employed to compile the material under the oversight of Jones, who was also to make a direct translation into English. However, Jones died before he could embark on this translation, and the task was taken up by Colebrooke. A copy of the original Sanskrit version of the digest, titled Vivādabhaṅgārṇava, can be found in the Colebrooke Collection (IO San 1767-1770), and the translation was published in 1798 as A Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions.

 

Front page to the first volume of A Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions (Calcutta, 1798). British Library, 5319.f.12.

 

However, Colebrooke was dissatisfied with this digest. In particular, he felt it was too long (the English translation consisted of four volumes), and he blamed this on the ‘copious commentary’ produced by Jagannātha Tarkapañcānana, the pandit in charge of the compilation (Colebrooke 1798, p. ix). Shortly after this, Colebrooke proposed a supplementary work and offered to oversee the work of the pandits, adding, "I should restrain the compilers from inserting a long train of argument in support, or in refutation, of the opinions cited by them, which has so greatly swelled the digest of Law on Contracts and Succession" (IOR/F/4/39/974)

 

The pandits, first and foremost, were scholars who were concerned with understanding the complexities of legal tradition and debate. The interpretation of Hindu law varied greatly across India, so for the pandits it was important to pay attention to these differences. Colebrooke, however, was concerned with establishing principles which could be applied in a uniform way across the different regions ruled by the British. He therefore became impatient with the pandits he employed for his new work. This is documented in a marginal note he added to a manuscript one of the pandits, called Bāla Śarman Pāyaguṇḍe, had produced for him: "After the experience I have had, that no Pandit is capable (or adapted by his habits of thinking) to compile a digest in the form I require, I must now seriously set about compiling it myself" (IO San 37).

 

A page from the Dharmaśāstrasaṃgraha with Colebrooke’s notes. British Library, IO San 37.

 

Colebrooke would continue to employ pandits to supply material for him, but he now took on responsibility for compiling the final text himself. His work on the supplementary digest continued for a number of years, but was ultimately abandoned. Instead, in 1810, Colebrooke published Two Treatises on the Hindu Law of Inheritance, an annotated English translation of the Dāyabhāga and the Mitākṣarā, two twelfth-century legal texts. In the preface, he explained why he had decided to publish this translation rather than his planned supplementary digest:

"In a general compilation, where the authorities are greatly multiplied, and the doctrines of many different schools, and of numerous authors are contrasted and compared, the reader is at a loss to collect the doctrines of a particular school and to follow the train of reasoning by which they are maintained. He is confounded by the perpetual conflict of discordant opinions and jarring deductions; and by the frequent transition from the positions of one sect to the principles of another. It may be useful then, that such a compilation should be preceded by the separate publication of the most approved works of each school. By exhibiting in an exact translation the text of the author with notes selected from the glosses of his commentators or from the works of other writers of the same school, a correct knowledge of that part of the Hindu law, which is expressly treated by him, will be made more easily attainable, than by trusting solely to a general compilation" (Colebrooke 1810, p. iii).

 

Colebrooke therefore sought to avoid the uncertainty and confusion created, as he saw it, by the many voices of Hindu legal scholarship, and instead to bring into focus what he identified as the two original and distinct ‘schools’ of law which existed in the regions of India under British rule. His translation included ‘annotations necessary to the illustration of the text’, but these, he explained, could be disregarded by those unfamiliar with Sanskrit. The English reader, he insisted, could rely on his scholarship:

"Having verified with great care the quotations of authors, as far as means are afforded to me by my own collection of Sanscrit law books (which includes, I believe, nearly all that are extant) I have added at the foot of the page notes of references to the places in which the texts are found. They will be satisfactory to the reader as demonstrating the general correctness of the original citations" (Colebrooke 1810, p. v).

 

Interestingly, then, the reason the Colebrooke Collection contains such a large number of Sanskrit legal manuscripts is Colebrooke’s dislike of the scholarly practices of the pandits who produced these manuscripts for him. Frustrated by their attention to the interpretative nuances of Hindu law, and desiring to produce a legal framework which could be easily applied by the British, Colebrooke took it upon himself to study and interpret Hindu law. To do this, he gathered his famous collection of Sanskrit legal manuscripts. However, despite his aversion to the methods of the pandits, he was nevertheless dependent on them to acquire, or produce, copies of the texts he required. The next blog post will look at the stories of two of these pandits.

 

In the third blog post on the provenance of the Colebrooke Collection, we will look at the stories of two of the pandits who worked with Colebrooke.

 

Works Consulted

Colebrooke, Henry Thomas (trans.), A Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions (Calcutta: Honourable Company's Press, 1798).

Colebrooke, Henry Thomas, (trans.), Two Treatises on the Hindu Law of Inheritance (Calcutta: Hindoostanee Press, 1810).

Fleming, Christopher T., Ownership and Inheritance in Sanskrit Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

Letter from the Government of Bengal to the Court of Directors, 25 March 1773. British Library, IOR/E/4/31, f 447.

Letter from H. T. Colebrooke to the Government of Bengal, 20 August 1797. British Library, IOR/F/4/39/974.

Regulation No. 27, from Regulations for the Administration of Justice, recorded on the Revenue Proceedings of Government, on the 28th March 1780; and passed by the Governor General and Council on the 11th April 1780. British Library, IOR/V/8/15.

Dharmaśāstrasaṃgraha. British Library, IO San 37.

Vivādārṇavasetu. British Library, IO San 3145a.

Vivādabhaṅgārṇava. British Library, IO San 1767-1770.

 

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

This is the first in a series of five blog posts on the provenance of the Colebrooke Collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Library.

Bust of Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837), by Henry Weekes, commissioned by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1837. RAS 02.008 

‘I am commanded to offer you in the name of the Court their best thanks and acknowledgements for the present which you therein purport making to the Company of your collection of Oriental manuscripts, and to assure you of the high sense which they entertain of your obliging attention. The Court propose to set apart a portion of their library for the acception of these valuable manuscripts and to distinguish it by the name of the Colebrooke Collection.’ (Letter from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to Colebrooke, 24 April 1819. British Library, IOR/E/255, f 240).

The above is an extract from a letter that was sent to Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837) by the East India Company’s Court of Directors in London, on 24 April 1819. Four years previously, Colebrooke had returned to Britain after thirty-two years in India. His career had been an impressive one, beginning on the lower rungs of the Company’s civil service and rising up eventually to become a member of the supreme council of the Government of Bengal.

However, what Colebrooke is most remembered for today is his scholarship. While in India, he held the position of professor of Sanskrit at the College of Fort William,  founded by the EIC in Calcutta in 1800. And for the nine years prior to his departure in 1815 he was the president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the pre-eminent forum for Europeans pursuing research into any branch of enquiry relating to India. Later, in 1823, he would found the Royal Asiatic Society in London, in an attempt to replicate something of that interest in Britain.

Colebrooke’s most tangible legacy is his collection of over two thousand Sanskrit manuscripts, which he brought back with him from India and donated to the EIC’s Library (later renamed the India Office Library, and now part of the British Library). The ‘Colebrooke Collection’ covers a wide range of subjects, including religion, philosophy, law, grammar, poetry, mathematics, astronomy, and botany, and has been a vital resource for students in Britain and beyond.

A page from the Mahabharata, one of the manuscripts in the Colebrooke Collection. British Library, IO San 1771.

But what is the story behind the formation of this important collection? In particular, how did Colebrooke come to be in India? What influenced his interests and choices as he formed his collection? And how did he find and acquire the manuscripts themselves? These questions will be examined in a series of blog posts, of which this first post, on the Colebrooke Family and the East India Company, will provide some background to Colebrooke’s arrival in India.

Even before Henry Thomas set off for Asia, the Colebrooke family had become closely associated with the East India Company. His father, Sir George Colebrooke (1729-1809), was a wealthy and prominent banker, and made investments in EIC shares. In 1764, he became one of the Company’s proprietors, the elite group of shareholders who owned enough stock to qualify for a vote to elect the members of the Court of Directors. These members, who met in the Company’s headquarters in London, were responsible for overseeing all of its operations. Sir George himself became a member in 1767, and served three terms as chairman in 1769, 1770, and 1772.

As chairman, Sir George defended the EIC against criticism from within Britain and attempts to introduce greater government control over its activities. This criticism stemmed from the growing power of the Company in India, where it had been fighting wars, making deals with local rulers, and taking control of areas of territory. Many in Britain believed the EIC had gone beyond the bounds of acceptable activity for a trading organisation, and were concerned by reports of corruption and abuse of power. Sir George successfully resisted calls for greater government control. However, during his third term as president, the Company experienced a major financial crisis and had to appeal to the government for relief, which was damaging for Sir George’s reputation. But worse was to come, as his own financial affairs rapidly deteriorated, leading ultimately to bankruptcy.

Henry's father Sir George Colebrooke was a prominent figure in British public life, and as the EIC foundered under his leadership he was the subject of attacks in the press. This cartoon is from an edition of the Oxford Magazine published in 1773. Sir George is depicted in the centre, kneeling before Lord North, the Prime Minister, while handing him a bag of money and pleading ‘Save us my Lord or we perish.’  British Museum, 1868,0808.10039. © The Trustees of the British Museum

It was in this context that Henry Thomas, along with his elder brother, Edward (1761-1838), set out for Asia to work for the East India Company. For someone who had occupied positions of considerable status, Sir George would have envisaged a more elevated future for his sons than a career in India. But in the family’s reduced situation, the EIC offered a potential path to restoring their fortunes. Opportunities were highly sought after, but their father’s previous service doubtless counted in the sons’ favour, and both obtained positions as writers, that is, administrators, in India.

Henry Thomas Colebrooke arrived in India in 1783. In the wake of its crisis ten years previously, the EIC had undergone a number of reforms, with an emphasis on improving the standards of its administration. Colebrooke had therefore arrived at a time of great change for the Company. Though his father’s reputation and the family’s situation had been greatly damaged, he had nevertheless been granted an opening in EIC employment. There was a need for competent administrators who were willing to familiarise themselves with local conditions and devise ways for the EIC to transform itself into a responsible government. This is the context in which Colebrooke embarked upon his career in the Company’s service.

The second blog post in this series on the provenance of the Colebrooke Collection will be on Colebrooke’s manuscripts on Hindu law.

Works Consulted
Buchan, P. Bruce, ‘The East India Company 1749-1800: The Evolution of a Territorial Strategy and the Changing Role of the Directors’, Business and Economic History, 23:1 (1994).
Rocher, Rosanne and Rocher, Ludo, The Making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company (London: Routledge, 2012).
Letter from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to H. T. Colebrooke, 24 April 1819. British Library, IOR/E/255, f 240.

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

 

Historical postcards in most cases are a simple reminder of commercial interests from a certain time or place, however when a collection is historically coherent, what can be identified is underlying propaganda, and mass commercial influence of a controversial period. A collection of over 500 mass-produced Japanese postcards (British Library, Photo 1418), grapples with these themes, presenting an eerie reminder of what a unified Korea under imperial Japan looked like. This collection was purchased by The British Library in 2018.

In 1910, after decades of political intervention, imperial Japan took control of the Korean Peninsula, a rule that would last until 1945. The annexation of Korea meant that for 35 years, the country would exist under Japanese administration by the name “Chosen” the Japanese version of the Korean term “Joseon”. The collapse of the Japanese Empire following WW2 led to the imminent Korean War dividing the landmass into what we now know as North Korea and South Korea. 

A postcard envelope advertising ‘Romantic Chosen’, British Library, Photo 1418(296)   

Produced by the Government Railways of Chosen, these commercial postcards would have been produced to encourage tourism; heritage sites Korea were advertised as top tourist destinations for Japanese travellers and settlers. The captions were written on the face of the images in both Japanese as well as in English, which is suggestive of production for a wider market. Today, they do much to reveal the history, landscape and architectural beauty of the peninsula before the Korean war and post-war modernization. However, commercially its layers of propaganda hint at the colonial policy and imperialist views of ethnic hierarchy of the Japanese Empire. 

'The view of the Emperor Ki Tsze's [Kija] Mausoleum, which tells us three thousand year’s history, Heijo [Pyongyang]'. British Library, Photo 1418(51)  

Take for example, the postcard above, that shows a mausoleum in Pyongyang commemorating the Chinese legend of Jizi, known as Kija in Korea. The caption reads ‘The view of the Emperor Ki Tsze's [Kija] Mausoleum, which tells us three thousand year’s history, Heijo [Pyongyang]’. The legend tells the story of how Shang Sage Jizi who belonged to the Shang dynastic family, fled to the Korean Peninsula, where he founded modern day Pyongyang. Essentially, the postcard was designed to promote a significant Korean site to the Japanese public including those who settled in Korea. The underlying message, however, enforces a notion that even Pyongyang was not founded by an “ethnic Korean” but by an outsider, much like the imperial Japanese. Making these connections is a deliberate display of controlling historical narrative through the tourist marketplace of Japan, to influence Japanese people and their understanding of Korean heritage. 

What is even more fascinating, is the role these postcards play when understanding the representation of Korean heritage and history over time. This particular monument fed a Japanese narrative of Korean citizens lacking claim to their heritage - today however, the story of Kija threatens the ideological beliefs of the current North Korean Administration. The importance of Kija to ethnic Koreans dates to the 14th century, and in 1570 King Seonjo of Korea instructed it to be mandatory that all those passing the mausoleum of Kija should dismount their horses to pay respect. Now however, Kija’s existence is disputed in North Korea, the story is deemed a glorified fabrication developed by the Japanese Empire and so the mausoleum is purposely excluded from the list of North Korean National Treasures. The site was allegedly excavated in the 1960’s, but records of its condition since then are unclear, and it is highly likely that the mausoleum has been demolished. 

Golden Buddha statue in Daeungjeong Pavillion in Bulguksa Temple, Gyeongju, South Korea, British Library, Photo 1418(233)   

On the brighter side of these picturesque postcards, they collectively provide us with the opportunity to study the sceneries of landscapes, Buddhist temples, legendary shrines and royal tombs in South Korea. There are also a series of street scenes under Japanese occupation in some of South Korea’s now major metropolitan cities such as Daegu (Taikyu) and Busan (Fusan).  

‘Motomachi Street with a row of shops, Taikyu [Daegu]’, British Library, Photo 1418(114)

For those interested in the historic sites of North Korea, these postcards present the rare angles of landmarks such as Chilsong Gate and Moran Hill which have drastically changed in the present DPRK. 

‘The full view of Daido Gate (Taedongmun Gate), the model building built 500 hundred years ago at Heijo (Pyongyang)’, British Library, Photo 1418(20)

Holistically, the collection exists as a coherent resource that can be consulted when studying the cultural propaganda that operated under Japanese colonial rule as well as researching the monuments and architecture of a unified Korea. Housed in the British Library Visual Arts Collection, these postcards are currently undergoing cataloging and once completed will be available for readers to request in the Print Room. 

Prints, drawings and photographs held in the Visual Arts collection can be consulted in the Print Room, located inside the Asia and Africa Reading Room. The Print Room is open by appointment on weekday mornings from 10-12.30. For appointment requests and for any questions regarding this collection, please email [email protected]. 

 

Simran Bance, Print Room Coordinator and Cataloguer

 

Further Reading:  

Uchida, Jun, Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876-1945, (2011) 

Todd, A. Henry, Assimilating Seoul: Japanese rule and the politics of public space in colonial Korea, 1910 –1945 (2014) 

Hong Yung Lee, Clark W. Sorensen, Yong-Chool Ha, Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea 1910-1945 (2013) 

Catalogue of Photographs from The British Library, The National Archives