This blog presents a less known facet of the British Library’s Hebrew manuscript holdings, but which nonetheless constitutes a genuine treasure trove. I am referring to deeds - termed also as ‘bonds’, ‘charters’, ‘grants’ - which form part of a small, yet exceptionally significant collection of Anglo-Jewish historic documents, acquired initially by the British Museum, that are now kept in the British Library.

Latin deed with Hebrew quitclaim (attached to seal), by Jacob ben Aaron releasing a piece of land to William le Briel. England, 1239 (Harley Ch 77 D 40, f. 1r)

These documents, written in either Hebrew or Latin, and more often than not in both, attest to business interactions between Jews and non-Jews in medieval England, and bear witness to the existence of a dynamic Jewish population prior to its expulsion in 1290. A substantial number of charters came from aristocratic libraries formerly owned by the Earls of Harley, Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Marques of Lansdowne, to name just a few. A lesser amount were acquired from private individuals through donation or purchase.

An interesting, common trait manifest in these charters is the use of Latin Gothic lettering and Hebrew Ashkenazi documentary script, as evident in this Harley example. Another shared characteristic is the material on which the deeds were written, namely parchment. Due to its strength and durability, parchment was perfectly fit for purpose.

Jews in medieval England: an overview

There is no real evidence of a Jewish presence in England before the Norman Conquest of 1066. In 1070, keen to boost England’s economy, William the Conqueror (William I, reigned. 1066-1087) invited Jewish merchants and artisans from Rouen in Normandy to come to England. His principal aim was to collect dues and taxes in currency rather than in kind, and to that end he needed competent financiers to do business with the indigenous population and supply ample quantities of coinage to the royal Treasury.

Few occupations were open to the Jews who settled in Norman England. Apart from a very small number of scholars, physicians and merchants the majority were engaged in moneylending with interest, an activity barred to Christians.

The coronation of William the Conqueror. Chronicle of Rochester Cathedral Priory. England, c.1100-c.1650 (Cotton MS Nero D II, f. 104r, detail)

Until the end of the 12th century, successive English monarchs granted the Jews protection and certain privileges which enabled them to prosper and acquire wealth, but this period of relative wellbeing ended with the death of King Henry II in 1189. Under King Richard I and his successors, the Anglo-Jewish communities suffered extreme outbursts of violence, ritual murder accusations, and untenable, repressive measures that culminated in their banishment by King Edward I on 18th July 1290. Jews were not permitted to return to these shores until 350 years later when Oliver Cromwell allowed them to re-settle.

Marginal miniature showing the expulsion of the Jews. Chronicle of Rochester Cathedral Priory. England, c.1100-c.1650 (Cotton MS Nero D II, f. 183v, detail)

The Exchequer of the Jews

Medieval English rulers regarded the Jews and their assets as personal property, imposing on them heavy taxes to finance wars and crusades and to bolster the royal coffers. The King tolerated their presence as long as they could serve his interests. Despite their being a minority of barely 0.25% of the total English population, the King’s Jews provided roughly 10% of the total crown revenue.

The office of Exchequer of the Jews, which operated from 1194 until the banishment in 1290, was established by Richard I to administer and control the taxes and law-cases of the Anglo-Jewish population. This government office ensured that copies of bonds (chirographs)[1] quitclaims (also called starrs or releases annulling debts to Jewish creditors) and attestations (formal confirmations by signature) were safely locked in special chests (archae) that were installed in major towns. The archae were regularly checked by royal officials in Westminster, who then advised the monarch whether he could impose additional levies and tallages (arbitrary taxes) on his Jewish subjects.

Upper section of a Latin grant of lease of land, with a Hebrew quitclaim written on the verso. Chirograph. London (?), England, 1235 (Lansdowne Ch 30, f. 1r, detail)

Add Ch 1251 dated 1182, is the earliest and undoubtedly the most historically important charter in the collection. Written in Latin, with a Hebrew acknowledgment of Solomon of Paris on the back, it records a £4 debt settlement of Richard de Malebis. Malebis (or Malebisse, denoting mala bestia or ‘evil beast’) was a Norman landowner heavily indebted to Jewish moneylenders. In 1190, in order to get rid of his debts, he instigated a savage mob attack on the Jews of York and their assets. Together with his accomplices, he burned documents specifying money owed to the Jews that had been kept in the York Cathedral for safety. The riot went completely out of control culminating in the massacre of 150 Jewish souls.

Latin deed recording Richard Malebis’d debt settlement, with Hebrew acknowledgement on the back. Lincoln (?), England, 1182 (Add Ch 1251, ff. 1r and 1v)

Since Norman England had no established legal practices covering moneylending and other financial dealings, Jewish moneylenders employed their own legal system and terminology based on talmudic law in charters written before 1290, such as the deeds discussed here. The phrase נחנו החתומים מטה מודים הודאה גמורה (Nahnu ha-ḥatumim matah modim hoda’ah gemurah … ‘We the undersigned hereby fully declare that…’) which is still employed in modern day contracts, is a case in point. The use of Hebrew attests to a high degree of literacy among Anglo-Jews, but even more importantly proves that Hebrew was accepted in the fiscal world of Norman England.

Hebrew quitclaim with Latin docket. Canterbury (?), England, 1237 (Add Ch 16384, 1r)
 

Add Ch 16384 is a Hebrew quitclaim with a Latin docket (an abridged record of the Hebrew text), written for Joseph ben Moses and Moses ben Jacob, releasing Peter de Bending and his heirs from all their debts. It is dated ‘St Peter Gule of August of the year twenty one of the reign of our lord King Henry [Henry III] son of King John’, corresponding to 1st August 1237. Other sources note that Peter de Bending was a heavily indebted landlord whose debts were redeemed by the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, which also repossessed his property. During the period 1150-1250, many monastic institutions in England were actively involved in the repossession of mortgaged lands.

Hebrew charter. Chirograph. Norwich, England, 1280 (Lansdowne Ch 667)

Lansdowne Ch 667 was acquired by the British Museum in 1907 with the collection of Sir William Petty, 1st Marques of Lansdowne (1737-1805). It represents the foot of a chirograph of a Hebrew deed for a house in the parish of St. Peter in Mancroft Street, Norwich, owned by Oshayah son of Isaac of York known as Ursel le Eveske of Norwich, son of Deulecresse that was sold to William son of Roger of South Walsham and his heirs. The Jewish witnesses to the transaction were Abraham of York, Isaac son of Deulecresse, Elias son of Elias, Jacob son of Jacob, Moses of Conisford.

Among the non-Jews witnessing the sale were Simon le Paumier and Robert de Bee. Norwich officials who were present that day included Adam de Toftes, Jacques Nade and John Bate. The deed was attested to by Ursel son of Isaac and is dated 9 Tevet 5041 which corresponds to 2nd December 1280. The sale is preceded by a release of rights to the house by Ursel’s wife Miriam, who owned it בעלילת דין כתובה (‘because of the rights of the ketubah’, i.e. as part of her marriage settlement).

It is interesting to note that it was not unusual for medieval Jewish women, either married or widowed, to own property and engage in business and finance. Indeed many traded locally or became moneylenders to the gentry and church officials.

This charter has been included in the British Library exhibition Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word that has been postponed until further notice.

The Anglo-Jewish charters have been digitised as part of the major, externally funded Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project, 2013-2020. They are accessible on the Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site.

Ilana Tahan, Lead Curator Hebrew & Christian Orient Studies

Further reading

Huscroft, Richard, Expulsion: England’s Jewish solution (Stroud: Tempus, 2006)
Mundill, Robin, The King’s Jews: Money, Massacre and Exodus in Medieval England (London: Continuum, 2010), pp. 99-100.
Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith,  Hebrew and Hebrew-Latin Documents from Medieval England: A Diplomatic and Palaeographical Study. Monumenta Palaeographica Medii Aevi. Series Hebraica (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), nos. 178, 179, 184, 186 & 181 (in order of appearance in the blog)

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[1] A chirograph was a legal document copied several times on a single piece of parchment with the word “Chirograph” written across the middle. It was then cut through in a scalloped pattern. This process ensured that the parties to an agreement were each given a copy of the written transaction, which could be easily validated should the need arise; the serrated edges reduced the risk of forgery.

In the collection of the British Library, an extraordinary photo album (Photo 311/1) titled Plague Visitation, 1896-97 documents the city of Bombay at the onset of the devastating bubonic plague pandemic of 1896, which would spread throughout the entire Indian subcontinent until finally subsiding in 1914. The British Library's album was commissioned by the Bombay Plague Committee and compiled by the British photographer Francis Benjamin Stewart. Apart from the British Library, the Wellcome Institute (fig. 1) in London and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles each hold an album with very similar photographs in their collections. While the British Library album contains 142 prints in total, the Wellcome volume contains 125 prints and the Getty album contains 138.

Figure 1. The cover of the Plague Visitation, Bombay 1896-97 photo album held by the Wellcome Collection.

    In the British Library album, Stewart contributed 8 albumen prints, while the remaining gelatin silver prints have been attributed to Captain C. Moss of the Gloucester Regiment. The albums appear to have been distributed to various British government officers. For instance, it is likely that the British Library’s photo album had been given to Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Peers Dimmock, the Director of the JJ Hospital in Bombay, by the Bombay Plague Committee. In addition, the images circulated within a larger public sphere (see catalogue record). Photographs from the albums were reproduced in the British weekly-illustrated newspaper The Graphic not long after the production of the album (fig. 2).

Figure 2. Reproduced photographs in The Graphic, September 18 1897, p. 394. (c) Illustrated London News/Mary Evans Picture Library

    The third pandemic of the bubonic plague began in Yunnan province in southwestern China around 1855 and reached Hong Kong in 1894. From there, the disease spread to other parts of the world, including India, Brazil, Madagascar, and the United States, primarily through maritime trade, resulting in an estimated fifteen million deaths across the world. Twelve of these fifteen million deaths occurred in India. From the very onset of the epidemic, the British government in India invested its full powers to prevent the spread of the disease, implementing invasive and destructive plague control measures at an unprecedented scale. To bring the plague under control the Bombay municipality implemented draconian measures, increasingly so as the epidemic continued to spread through the subcontinent. The colonial state sanctioned British and Indian troops to enter into the private homes of the city’s residents to locate afflicted or deceased persons. The infected were dragged to various hospitals within the city where they invariably died, while their clothes and belongings were burned at street corners. Others were directed into plague camps where they received inoculations while their houses were flushed, fumigated, and lime washed, effectively destroying their possessions in the process (Arnold 1993). Yet, despite these strategies of control, the colonial state failed to contain the disease. As the disease spread across the world, it not only left a long trail of casualties but also a substantial visual archive on the first large-scale bio-political crisis to be captured through the photographic lens in colonial India and worldwide.

    Scholars have identified epidemiological photography as a new genre of photography that emerged at the turn of the century—one that brought together the conventions of ethnography and documentary photography to document the broader ecology of epidemics, including factors relating to their outbreak, their modes of transmission, and their destructive consequences (see Lynteris 2016 and Englemann 2017). Indeed, rather than following the conventions of nineteenth-century medical photography, which focus on the physical manifestations of disease, the photographs in the Bombay photo-albums highlight the effects of the plague in the city alongside the colonial state’s role in preventing the propagation of the disease. One sees medical staff and hospitals, preventative measures such as the cleaning of streets and houses, health inspections, corpses and burial grounds, and infantrymen on duty (fig. 3 and 4).

Figure 3: ‘House to House Visitation. Burning Infected Bedding’. Photograph by Captain C. Moss. 1896-97. British Library, Photo 311/1(91)

Figure 4: 'Bombay plague observation camp: spraying detainee with disinfectant'. Photographed by Captain C. Moss, 1896-97. British Library, Photo 311/1(139)

    As a whole, the photographs appear to present a narrative of plague reform and colonial intervention. For example, in Stewart’s photograph “Flushing Engine Cleansing Infected Houses,” (fig. 5) one can see government officials flush clean seawater onto tenements that have been contaminated by the plague in order to sanitize the space.

Figure 5: Photograph of 'Flushing engine cleaning [plague] infected houses'. Photograph by F.B. Stewart, 1896-87, Wellcome Library no. 24258i. Another copy at British Library, Photo 311/1(108).

At the same time, the photographs foreground the gradual, even uneven, development of colonial scientific epistemologies and the different fields of thought that constituted discourses of tropical hygiene and medicine. The Bombay photo-albums were produced in the last decade of the nineteenth century, at a time when conflicting theories of disease causation characterized medical discourse. British health officials in London had accepted the germ theory of disease causation, wherein diseases proliferate through the spread of pathogens. However, many colonial administrators found it difficult to discard earlier ideas of disease and miasma and, within colonial scientific discourse, environmental factors such as noxious miasmas, heat, moisture, poor ventilation were believed to be responsible for the causation and propagation of disease (Kidambi 2007, 52). Accordingly, European officials at the time believed that water, specifically seawater, could cleanse infected spaces and flush out diseases, and by the end of 1896, three million gallons of salt water were being flushed daily through Bombay’s drains and sewers to clean the city’s irrigation and sewage systems (Catanach 1998, 146).

In addition to water, air and sunlight were also active agents in the eradication of the plague epidemic in late nineteenth-century Bombay. Captain C. Moss’s photographs, “Plague-stricken houses unroofed to let in sun and air” (fig. 7) depict thatched huts that have been unroofed to allow sunlight and air to enter into their interior spaces.

Figure 6. 'Alibag, Kolaba. Infected houses un-roofed'. Photographed by Captain C. Moss, 1896-97. British Library, Photo 311/1(50).

Moss’s photographs not only reflect concurrent colonial epidemiological theories, which focused on the unsanitary and climatic factors that enabled diseases to thrive, but also prefigure the dramatic reconstruction of Bombay facilitated by the colonial government in the early twentieth century in response to the plague pandemic. The government’s new city improvement schemes would include the reclamation of land from the sea, the building of broad boulevards that would bring breezes, deemed healthful, from the ocean to the neighborhoods; and the conversion of local agrarian lands into “garden suburbs.” (see Chopra 2011 and Rao 2012) Thus, the British Library’s photo-album serves as a significant archive of British colonial epidemiological, visual, and urban practices.

Bibliography:

David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

I.J. Catanach, “Plague and the Tensions of Empire: India 1896-1918” in Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies, ed. David Arnold (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).

Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny (London: Routledge, 2005)

Preeti Chopra, A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Myron J. Ehrenberg, “City of the Plague: Bombay, 1896” in Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894-1901 (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 47-78.

Lukas Engelmann, “What Are Medical Photographs of Plague?” REMEDIA, January 31, 2017, https://remedianetwork.net/2017/01/31/what-are-medical-photographs-of-plague/.

Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890-1920 (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007).

Christos Lynteris, “The Prophetic Faculty of Epidemic Photography: Chinese Wet Markets and the Imagination of the Next Pandemic,” Visual Anthropology 29, no. 2, (2016): 118-132.

Nikhil Rao, House, but No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay's Suburbs, 1898-1964 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

Shivani Sud, "Water, Air, Light: The Materialities of Plague Photography in Colonial Bombay, 1896–97," Getty Research Journal, no. 12 (2020): 219-230

 

Shivani Sud is a PhD candidate at the University of California at Berkeley. Her recently published article on the Getty's album is listed above.

 

 

While awaiting the postponed opening of our exhibition Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word, I am delighted to offer our readers and followers snapshots of its magnificent contents. Among the 39 Hebrew manuscripts included in the exhibition, there are three pertaining to Maimonides. In this blog, I will be highlighting an all-time favourite - Maimonides’ signed responsum (Or 5519 B), which was discovered in the 19th century in the Cairo Genizah.

Maimonides’ responsum.  Fustat, Old Cairo, Egypt, 12th century CE (Or 5519B)

Who was Maimonides?

One of the greatest Jewish sages of all times, Mosheh ben Maimon (b.1135, Cordoba, Spain, d.1204, Fustat, Old Cairo, Egypt), was not only an outstanding legal authority, erudite philosopher and celebrated physician, but, also the most influential Jewish spiritual leader of his era. The Arabs amongst whom he spent most of his life knew him as Abu Imram Musa ibn Maimun al-Qurtubi. To Western Christian scholars he was known as Moses Maimonides or simply Maimonides, while his own people called him Rambam, an acronym of Rabbi Mosheh Ben Maimon.

Monument of Maimonides in Córdoba, Spain. Photo: Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA

A polymath with a stupendous intellect and an astonishing memory (legend has it that he retained every word and thought after reading a book), Maimonides displays an unmatched originality, incisive analytical power and profound erudition in most of his works. There is hardly a discipline of medieval scholarship, or field of Jewish knowledge that he did not master and cover in his writings. He was a polyglot fluent in Arabic and Hebrew, and seemingly well acquainted with Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Persian and Spanish.

Although Maimonides’ literary legacy encompasses a vast corpus of writings in a broad range of disciplines, he is famous for composing three of Judaism’s major works: the commentary to the Mishnah - oral tradition of Jewish Law (1168 CE), the Mishneh Torah (The Second Law or the Mighty Hand) a monumental code of Jewish law (1178 CE), and the Moreh Nevukhin (The Guide for the Perplexed), probably the most authoritative Jewish philosophical treatise of the medieval era (1190 CE).


Left: lavishly illuminated page from the Lisbon Mishneh Torah. Lisbon, Portugal, 1472 (Harley MS 5698, f. 11v);
right: embellished opening to Sefer Nezikin (Book of Damages), Lisbon Mishneh Torah. Lisbon, Portugal, 1472 (Harley MS 5699, f. 277v)

What are responsa?

A rich source of historical and sociological material, responsa (singular responsum) are written answers to questions asked of various rabbinic authorities on religious, legal or general matters. This rabbinic-talmudic literary genre (Hebrew she’elot u-teshuvot) spans more than fourteen centuries and covers the vast geographical expanse of the Jewish Diaspora.

The beginnings of the genre can be traced back to the late talmudic period (c. 6th century CE) when the geonim–teachers and scholars of the Babylonian academies–began receiving legal questions from diasporic countries. The preservation of this material in Cairo, which between the 6th and 11th centuries CE served as the principal distribution centre for answers sent onwards to western North African Jewish communities, contributed further to its survival. Not surprisingly, a hoard of ‘gaonic responsa’ was found among the treasures accumulated in the Cairo Genizah when it was uncovered more than a century ago.

Autograph responsum of Moses Maimonides

Difficult cases were referred by local rabbinic courts to the world-renowned authority Moses Maimonides in Fustat, Old Cairo, and the latter drafted his reply, or responsum as in this example. This case concerns a teacher who regretted an oath he had taken not to teach the daughters of a certain person. The oath, which had been prompted by slanderous remarks, resulted in loss of earnings for the teacher and disruption to the girls’ education. Maimonides’ succinct answer rules that the teacher should rescind the oath in front of ‘three Israelites’, then resume his work as before. The last word in the document is Maimonides’ signature Mosheh (Moses).

Maimonides’ own handwriting with his signature (last word in line 3). Fustat, Old Cairo, Egypt, 12th century CE (Or 5519B, detail)

The enquiry was written, presumably by a professional notary, in a semi-square Spanish-Maghrebi hand, in a mixture of rabbinic Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic. It begins with a sequence of honorific attributes addressed to Maimonides such as for instance: Mosheh ha-rav ha-gadol (Moses the Great Rabbi) and ha-Patish he-hazak (the powerful hammer). The succinct reply, in the same mixed languages, is in Maimonides’ own hand and occupies the last three lines of text.

The question addressed to Maimonides with honorific attributes (line 2 from the top). Fustat, Old Cairo, Egypt, 12th century CE (Or 5519B, detail)

Apart from illustrating Maimonides’ unsurpassed authority and the veneration he commanded from the Jewish world, this significant autograph manuscript shows Maimonides’ sympathetic approach and high degree of pragmatism when dealing with his fellow co-religionists’ predicaments. It also provides a glimpse of Jewish life in twelfth-century Egypt and demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, education in medieval times was not restricted to Jewish males.

Over five hundred responsa written by Moses Maimonides are known to have survived. They are priceless testimonies to his thinking on applying the law to actual cases, and illuminate the social conditions prevailing during his lifetime. Maimonides’ legal answers embrace a broad spectrum of life situations including business partnerships, conversion to Judaism, inheritance, marriage and divorce, oaths, and others. Although many lack the date of composition, it is generally accepted that they were written between 1167, shortly after his arrival in Egypt and 1204, the year of his death. The first collection of Maimonides’ responsa appeared in print only in the 18th century. Noteworthy scholarly collections that have been published since include Alfred Freimann’s 1934 edition, and Joshua Blau’s 1957-61 four-volume compilation, both in Hebrew.

Further readings

Blau, Joshua, Teshuvot ha-Rambam. 4 vols, Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1957-1961.
Freimann, Alfred, Teshuvot ha-Rambam, Jerusalem, Mekize Nirdamim, first edition, 1934.
Halbertal, Moshe, Maimonides: Life and Thought, Princeton University Press, 2014.
Kraemer Joel L., Maimonides: the Life and World of one of Civilizations’ greatest minds, Doubleday Religion, 2010.
Zuroff Abraham N., The Responsa of Maimonides,Yeshiva University, 1966.

Ilana Tahan, Lead Curator Hebrew & Christian Orient Studies

The poetic story of Suthon and Manora (สุธนมโนห์รา) is one of the most popular Thai literary works and has inspired fine art and the performing arts in Thailand. The theme of the story is rooted in an early Sanskrit text with the title Sudhanakumāravadāna which is included in the Divyāvadāna, a collection of biographical narratives of important figures in early Buddhist history, dating back to the third or fourth century CE. Another related Sanskrit source is the Kinnarī Jātaka in the Mahāvastu, a preface to the Buddhist monastic code. Based on a Pali translation of the Sudhana Jātaka, an extra-canonical Birth Tale of the Buddha (Paññāsa Jātaka) created in northern Thailand around the fifteenth century, two poetic versions (klon suat) of Suthon and Manora were then composed in the Thai language: one showing a central Thai origin and another with a southern Thai cultural context. However, the story is also known in the Lao, Khmer, Mon, Shan and Burmese literary and performing traditions. Scenes from the legend based on the early Indian sources are depicted in a painting in cave 1 at Ajanta (5th century CE) in India and on twenty relief panels on the first terrace of Candi Borobudur (8th/9th century CE) in Indonesia, the largest Buddhist monument in the world.

Text passage from the story of Suthon and Manora in a Thai folding book. Thailand, 19th century (British Library, Or.8851 f.15)

At the centre of the story is Kinnari Manora (กินรี มโนห์รา), a female mythical figure with a human head and upper body and the lower body of a bird. Kinnari, and their male counterparts, Kinnara (กินนร), are believed to live in the the mythical realm of half-bird-half-human beings beyond the Himavanta forest, which is inaccessible for humans whereas Kinnara and Kinnari have the ability to enter the human realm. Manora lives happily as a princess in the world of Kinnara (plural). However, one day while taking a bath in a lake of the human realm, she is captured by a hunter with a magic noose and is forced to remain in the world of humans. Here she meets Prince Suthon, heir to the kingdom of Uttarapancala, and subsequently the two fall in love and get married.

A pair of Kinnara in the mythological Himavanta forest depicted in a collection of drawings on Thai cosmology and mythology. Thailand, 1824 (British Library, Add MS 27370 sheet 3)

However, because of conflict in the kingdom Prince Suthon is sent away to subdue a rebellious vassal. A jealous court counselor misinterprets a dream of the king and requests the sacrifice of Manora. She flees the kingdom and returns to the realm of Kinnara, leaving her beloved Suthon behind. When he returns and discovers that Manora was forced to leave, he chases after her. Despite the perilous journey to the realm of Kinnara, he proves his love for Manora to the king. Finally, the two lovers are reunited and return to the human realm and live happily ever after.

The two poetic versions in Thai language adhere to the Pali version of the Sudhana Jātaka in all major and minor details, however, they are not actual translations, but versified re-tellings of the story. The Thai texts also emphasize and embellish the natural setting of the tale in line with the characteristics often found in Thai literature and art. While the figure of Suthon enjoys the status of a Bodhisatta (Buddha-to-be), the figure of Manora represents ideal beauty, set in a Thai stylistic framework for the story that employs description and digression, epithets, metaphors and similes.

Front cover of the book "Phra Suthon Manora", retold by Phongchan and published by Sermwit Bannakhan publishing house, Bangkok, in BE 2524 (1981 CE)


Numerous print publications containing the story of Suthon and Manora have appeared in Thai language in the past hundred years, mainly for pleasure reading and as juvenile literature.

Various translations were made into European languages: a French translation by Jean Drans was included in his publication with the title "Histoire de Nang Manôra et histoire de Sang Thong: deux récits du Recueil des cinquante Jâtaka. Traduits du siamois" (Tokyo, 1947). A translation into German by Christian Velder appeared in the book "Muschelprinz und Duftende Blüte: Liebesgeschichten aus Thailand" (Zurich, 1966). Henry Ginsburg, while working on his dissertaion "The Sudhana-Manohara tale in Thai: a comparative study based on two texts from the National Library, Bangkok and Wat Machimawat, Songkhla" (SOAS University of London, 1971) made a translation of the story from Thai into English, now held at the British Library (Or.16758).

The southern Thai tradition of Suthon and Manora also relates to a popular dance-drama known as manora or short nora (โนรา), which appears to borrow its name from the heroine, Kinnari Manora, although the story itself is not re-enacted in the dance performance. While carrying out research for his dissertation in Thailand, Henry Ginsburg was able to attend a nora performance, which is documented in his photo collection (Photo 1213).

Traditional nora performer in southern Thailand, late 1960s. Photograph by Henry Ginsburg (British Library, Photo 1213(233))

There are two types of nora dance: one is performed in a ceremonial context, known as nora rong khru (โนราโรงครู), and the other is for entertainment.

Nora rong khru is an important ritual dance for professional nora performers. Its purpose is to invite the ancestral spirits of the great nora masters of the past in order to pay homage to them. The ritual involves making votive offerings to the ancestral spirits, and the initiation of novice dancers. The full version of the ritual dance, which lasts three days and nights, is a highlight of events in the community. It usually is performed once in a year, or every three or five years, depending on the traditions of the different nora schools. A shorter version of the ritual can be performed more frequently and lasts only one day and one night.

Nora performances for entertainment can be held at any time, and they can have a competitive character. They allow dancers - novices and masters alike - to demonstrate their talents and their skills which can combine the dancing with singing. The dance is characterised by striking body poses which require many years of practice. Normally such performances do not focus on telling a story, but the dancers may decide to include episodes from well-known stories like Suthon and Manora to entertain the audiences. One of the most popular scenes to be performed is the scene of the huntsman capturing Manora. Entertainment performances always include at the beginning a song to pay homage to the teachers and the great ancestral masters of nora, and a solo performance of the current master of the school or dance troupe.

Kanit Sripaoraya, a Ph.D. candidate and a nora practitioner performs one nora movement in the pose of ‘the sitting of Kinnara’ (in Thai 'Kinnon-nang', กินนรนั่ง), 29 September 2014. © Photograph courtesy of Kanit Sripaoraya.

Nora dances are often performed on a makeshift stage made specifically for this purpose in the community. The back of the stage is formed by a large colourful painting on cloth or a curtain. An orchestra which comprises mostly of percussion instruments determines the speed and rhythm of the dance. The most striking element of the requisites for nora performances are the costumes of the dancers who can be male or female. The costume of the principal performer who is called nora yai is made of beads in various colours which are arranged in geometric patterns. Other components include an elaborately decorated headgear, a pair of wings attached to the costume, a pendant, a decorative tail, a wrap-around skirt, a pair of calf-length trousers, additional pieces of cloth hanging down from the waist, bracelets and fingertip extension pieces. The other dancers do not usually have a pendant and wings. The attributes related to birds (wings and decorative bird tail) can be seen as a reference to Kinnari Manora, the half-bird half-human heroine of the tale of Suthon and Manora.

Nora Thanakorn Bandisak (right) recites the verse, and leads the nora practitioners, Nora Ekachai Numsawat (left) and Nora Nipaporn Namsuk (center) perform one of the movement of ‘Bot Prathom’ (บทปฐม) for the ceremony of nora (nora rong khru, โนราโรงครู) at Baan Lak chang, Nakorn Si Thammarat, Thailand, 1 May 2013. © Photograph courtesy of Kanit Sripaoraya.

Jana Igunma, Henry Ginsburg Curator for Thai, Lao and Cambodian collections

 

Bibliography

Baker, Chris and Pasuk Phongpaichit, From the fifty Jātaka: Selections from the Thai Paññāsa Jātaka. Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2019.
Drans, Jean, Histoire de Nang Manôra et histoire de Sang Thong : deux récits du Recueil des cinquante Jâtaka. Traduits du siamois . Tokyo: Presses salésiennes, 1947.
Ginsburg, Henry, The Sudhana-Manoharā tale in Thai: a comparative study based on two texts from the National Library, Bangkok and Wat Macimāwāt, Songkhla. London: University of London, 1972.
Horner, Isaline B. and Padmanabh S. Jaini, Apocryphal birth-stories : (Paññasa-jātaka). London: The Pali Text Society, 1985-1986 (2 vol).
Levin, Cecelia, Sudhana and Manoharā, “A Story of Love, Loss and Redemption at Candi Borobudur,” In From Beyond the Eastern Horizon: Essays in Honour of Professor Lokesh Chandra. Ed. Manjushree. Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2011, pp. 191-204.
NORA, Intangible Cultural Heritage  (retrieved 20.04.2020).
Padmanabh S. Jaini, “The story of Sudhana and Manohara: an analysis of the texts and the Borobudur reliefs,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. London: University of London, vol. 29, pt. 3, 1966.
Schlingloff, Dieter: Prince Sudhana and the kinnari, an Indian love-story in Ajanta. Torino: Istituto di indologia, 1973.
Velder, Christian: Muschelprinz und Duftende Blüte: Liebesgeschichten aus Thailand. Zürich: Manesse, 1966.

 

The Miftāḥ al-Fużalā or Key of the Learned of Muḥammad Dā’ūd Shādiyābādī (BL Or 3299), a multilingual illustrated Persian dictionary written in 1468 gives us glimpses into the ephemeral life of the sultanate of Malwa in Central India. This illustrated dictionary (farhang) has quadruple the number of illustrations (179 in total) as Mandu’s famed Ni‘matnāmah or Book of Delights (BL IO Islamic 149), but it has mostly escaped scholarly attention until recently. It has been attributed to 1490 based on its paintings’ close relationship to a contemporaneous Shirazi idiom. Like the Ni‘matnāmah, it is a unicum and no other known illustrated versions survive. Other works by Shadiyabadi include a vernacularised Persian transcreation of al-Jazarī’s twelfth-century Arabic book on automata (Wonders of Crafts, ‘Ajā’ib al-Ṣanā‘ī, BL Or 13718) and a commentary on the Persian poet Khāqānī’s oeuvre (Bodleian MS Fraser 63).

My doctoral thesis, Wonder Reoriented: Manuscripts and Experience in Islamicate Societies of South Asia (ca. 1450–1600)—a study of the corpus of Islamicate cosmographies and related wonder manuscripts in South Asia—was prompted by the Miftāḥ. My work on the Miftāḥ and the ‘Ajā’ib al-Ṣanā‘ī led me to conduct a global search of early-modern manuscripts devoted to wonder and the cosmos made in South Asia. Through a philological and codicological analysis of the Miftāḥ my thesis argues that the experience of this book generated a playful, didactive soundscape and its form and function owed much to the genre of the Islamicate cosmography (‘ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt). The definitions contained in the Miftāḥ shed light on nearly every aspect of early-modern material culture including metalwork, textiles, arms and armour, food, and architecture.

Fig. 1: Dolls (bādajan), Miftāḥ al-Fużalā of Shadiyabadi, Mandu, ca. 1490 5.9 x 6.8 cm (British Library Or 3299, f. 51v)

As a happy diversion from today’s world, here I present some of the toys from the Miftāḥ. The Miftāḥ’s large, well-spaced nasta‘līq writing suggests that it may have been intended for a young learner, likely a child. The inclusion of several entries devoted to toys also implies a child reader. For example, the first illustrated entry one encounters in the Miftāḥ is for the term dolls. Shadiyabadi defines ‘bādajan’ as “dolls that young girls make clothes for and play with, and in Hindavi they are called ‘guriy[a]’.” (fig. 1). Like a child playing with their early-modern Cabbage Patch Kids, the entry shows a young girl putting her three dolls to bed. It captures a lost moment of childhood play from the past.

Fig. 2: Dolls (lahfatān), Miftāḥ al-Fużalā of Shadiyabadi, Mandu, ca. 1490, 7.5 x 8 cm (British Library Or 3299, f. 259v)

To work on the Miftāḥ I developed a finding aid in Excel that allowed me to notice how its craftsmen created several visual synonyms. So, for the word ‘bādajan,’ we have the visual synonym of ‘lahfatān’ (fig. 2). Shadiyabadi states that these are dolls for which young girls (dukhtarān) make clothing and play with. This entry, however, does not include the Hindavi equivalent.

Fig. 3: Yo-yo (farmūk, laṭṭū) Miftāḥ al-Fużalā of Shadiyabadi, Mandu, ca. 1490, 7.6 x 7.6 cm (British Library Or 3299, f. 212v)

Fig. 4: Yo-yo (bādfarah, laṭṭū) Miftāḥ al-Fużalā of Shadiyabadi, Mandu, ca. 1490, 6.2 x 6.5 cm (British Library Or 3299, f. 55v)

Fig. 5: Lady with a Yo-yo, India, Rajasthan, Raghugarh, ca. 1770. Opaque watercolour and gold on paper, sheet: 9 1/4 x 6 3/16 in. (23.5 x 15.7 cm) (Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Alan Kirschbaum, 80.268.1)

In addition to dolls, the Miftāḥ contains entries on toys that one would recognise from South Asian art more broadly. For example, it devotes an entry to the whip-top or yo-yo which Shadiyabadi calls a farmūk in Persian and laṭṭū in Hindavi (fig. 3). It too has a visual synonym in the word bādfarah that is also accompanied by its Hindavi equivalent (fig. 4). These yo-yos, like many of the crafts and objects depicted in the Miftāḥ, can be found in numerous other examples. There are several Rajput paintings of ladies playing with yo-yos, for instance (fig. 5). The Miftāḥ gives words to these objects in both Persian and Hindavi thereby allowing art historians to come closer to these objects through philology.

Fig. 6: Kazhmazh, Miftāḥ al-Fużalā of Shadiyabadi, Mandu, ca. 1490, 5.9 x 7.9 cm (British Library Or 3299, f. 228v)

By way of one final example, a teaser for forthcoming work on the Miftāḥ’s sonic elements and sultanate soundscapes, I offer the definition of kazhmazh. Shadiyabadi defines kazhmazh as the child whose language is still not fully developed. The word itself is onomatopoetic, suggesting a childlike babble. The painting depicts a larger woman, probably the mother, speaking to her son. The child is comparatively much smaller. As we know so little about childhood and play in early-modern India, this illustrated definition gives us one vision of that ephemeral world. We can both hear and see the child struggle to correctly pronounce words correctly. It, along with the entries devoted to toys, draw us into a world of the pleasures of sultanate children.

I dedicate this piece especially to my nieces Anika and Zarina Tekchandani.

Vivek Gupta, PhD History of Art at SOAS, University of London; Postdoctoral Associate in Islamic Art at the University of Cambridge based at the Centre of Islamic Studies (from September 2020); and former doctoral placement at BL Asian and African Collections

Supplementary Reading

Baevskiĭ, Solomon I, Early Persian Lexicography. Trans. N. Killian. Global Oriental: Kent, 2007.
Gupta, Vivek, Wonder Reoriented: Manuscripts and Experience in Islamicate Societies of  South Asia, ca. 1450—1600. PhD thesis, SOAS University of London, 2020.
Karomat, Dilorom, “Turki and Hindavi in the World of Persian.” In After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India, eds. Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 131-66.
Qaisar, A. Jan, and Verma, Som Prakash,  “The Miftah-ul Fuzala’: A Study of an Illustrated Persian Lexicon.” In Art and Culture Painting and Perspective vol. II, eds. Ahsan Jan Qaisar, Som Prakash Verma, Abhinav Publications: New Delhi, 2002, pp. 17-32.
Titley, Norah, “An Illustrated Persian Glossary of the Sixteenth Century,” The British Museum Quarterly 29. no. 1/2. (Winter 1964-1965), pp. 15-19.

This blog is inspired by our temporarily postponed exhibition Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word. As it happens, among the 39 exhibited manuscripts, there are three that have a hand diagram: a short tract on chiromancy (palmistry), a calendrical work, and a treatise on music.

While diagrams of chiromantic treatises help in revealing the character and fate of a particular person (see our previous blog: Written in your palm, just read it!), other kinds of hand diagrams work more like scientific instruments or visual aids. One of the manuscripts in our new exhibition contains a treatise on the calendar by the little-known Josef ben Shem Ṭov ben Yeshuʿah Ḥai entitled Sheʾerit Yosef (Joseph’s legacy). This peculiar-looking hand diagram below serves as a tool for calendrical calculations.

Hand diagram in Josef ben Shem Ṭov ben Yeshuʿah Ḥai’s Sheʾerit Yosef, Algeria, 1804 (British Library Or 9782, ff. 13v-14r)


The manuscript has a colophon (literally “final point”), that is, a note that provides details about the production of the manuscript, such as when and where it was copied, who copied it and for whom. According to this colophon (at the bottom of f. 13v), Samuel the scribe copied the manuscript in Tlemcen (today in Algeria) within a week: he started working at the beginning of the Jewish month Kislev, and finished it on 6 Kislev 5565 (November 1804). The hand diagram is placed at the very end of the tract, on the page opposite the colophon.

Neither the technique of reckoning the calendar by using one’s hands nor related hand diagrams are specifically Jewish. Already the famous 8th-century Benedictine monk Bede the Venerable speaks about calculating the calendar with the help of one’s hands:

Some people, in order to simplify calculation, have transferred both cycles, the lunar and the solar, onto the joints of their fingers. Because the human hand has 19 joints if we include the tips of the fingers, by applying each year to one of these joints they begin the lunar cycle on the inside of the left hand… Again, because the two hands together, if you do not count in the fingertips, have 28 joints, they assign the years [of the solar cycle] to these, beginning at the little finger of the left hand. (Bede, The Reckoning of Time, translated, with introduction and commentary by Faith Wallis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), p. 138)

A beautifully illustrated astronomical and calendrical miscellany from around 1300 offers an excellent Christian example of such hand diagrams. The illustration is spread over two consecutive pages providing a visual aid for the reader of Balduinus de Mardochio’s tract (f. 5v).

 
Hand diagrams in a calendrical tract by Balduinus de Mardochio (British Library Harley MS 3647, ff. 5r and 5v)

Since one of the most important roles of calculating the calendar has always been to determine the dates of certain religious festivals, Hebrew calendrical hand diagrams are not identical to their Christian counterparts. While the Gregorian calendar is solar, the Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar, that is, its months are based on lunar months and its years are based on solar years. The sum of 12 lunar months is some 11 days shorter than the solar year, therefore every two or three years an intercalary month is added to the year (in these years, there are two months of Adar: Adar I and Adar II). The years with 13 months are called leap years, while the years with 12 months are the ordinary years. Why is it important to adjust to the solar year? Because festivals are often connected to specific agricultural seasons, which correspond to the solar year (the time taken by the earth to make one revolution around the sun). Therefore, if you want the festivals to fall within the right season, you need to keep your calendar “true with the sun”, that is, adjusted to the solar year.

To cut a long story short, Hebrew calendrical hand diagrams serve as tools to calculate the exact time of the four seasonal turning points (tekufot) in ordinary and in leap years. These are:

• the tekufah of the month Nisan marking the spring equinox (beginning of spring);
• the tekufah of the month Tamuz marking the summer solstice (beginning of summer);
• the tekufah of the month Tishri marking autumnal equinox (beginning of fall);
• and the tekufah of the month Tevet marking the winter solstice (beginning of winter).

By calculating these turning points, it is possible to determine the correct dates of the religious festivals. These Hebrew diagrams are often accompanied by a rhyming mnemonic to help memorise the rules. To help you imagine these short mnemonics, think of the old English rhyme:

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November,
All the rest have 31, Except the second month alone,
To which 28 we assign, And leap year gives it 29.

Another copy of the tract Sheʾerit Yosef from late 18th century Morocco displays a less intricate diagram than its copy from Algeria. The caption above the diagram reads: And now I will present you this strong hand so that you know from it the seasons of Samuel, so that you can learn from it their days, their hours, and the day of asking for rain… [the day on which Jews begin reciting the prayer for rain, occurring during the pilgrim festival of Sukkot].

Josef ben Shem Ṭov ben Yeshuʿah Ḥai. Sheʾerit Yosef, Tangier (Morocco), 1797 (British Library Or 10310, f. 49r)

Moreover, similar hand diagrams were included into the so-called Sifre evronot (‘Books of Intercalations’, from the root עבר meaning ‘pregnancy’ or ‘intercalation’). Such calendrical manuals were especially popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. A late-17th century Sefer evronot by Isaac Katzenellenbogen of Prague contains a hand diagram with elaborate floral motifs, in a style reminiscent of folk art. The caption above the diagram reads luaḥ ha-yad, that is, hand calendar. Another, less embellished example is a copy of Eliezer ben Jacob Berlin’s Sefer evronot from the mid-18^th century. Both of these diagrams are based on the same principle as the diagrams in the Sheʾerit Yosef.

 
Left: (Molad Yitsḥaḳ) Sefer Evronot by Isaac Katzenellenbogen. Poland, 1690 (British Library Or 10784, f. 10v); right: Sefer Evronot by Eliezer ben Jacob Berlin. Hamburg, 1744/5 (British Library Or 10520, f. 15r)

The origin of this Jewish version of calendrical hand diagrams is not clear. According to one tradition attributed to Joseph Vecinho, who may or may not have been the physician of the Portuguese king John II (d. 1495), and who may or may not have given calendrical tables to Christopher Columbus, this Jewish method of finger reckoning was invented by Vecinho’s teacher, the famous Spanish astronomer Abraham ben Samuel Zacuto (1452-ca. 1515). However, the mysterious figure of Joseph Vecinho could be the topic of another blog! And if you wish to know exactly how to calculate the beginnings of the seasons on your hand, consult the literature below.

Zsofi Buda, former Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project Cataloguer, Asian and African Collections

References

Straus, Josh, “Sifrei Evronot: An Introduction to Hebrew Calendar Manuals,” Washington University Undergraduate Research Digest, vol 2:1 (2006).
Carlebach, Elisheva. Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2011).
Munich double Evronot book, fol. 14, Index of Jewish Art online database
Chinitz, Jacob. “The Jewish Calendar,” The Jewish Bible Quarterly, 29:3.
Cohen, Martin A., ‘Vecinho, Joseph’, in Encyclopaedia Judaica vol. 20 (Detroit: Macmillan, 2007; 2nd edition), pp. 487-488.

Sir William Jones collected a large array of manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Chinese and Sanskrit during both his life as a student and lawyer in London, and also as a puisne judge in Bengal. Collecting primarily Persian and Arabic materials and mostly commissioning Sanskrit materials, Jones picked up quite a number of oddities along the way. By far the biggest part of the collection is made up of well-known or popular works of Arabic and Persian science, literature and grammar as well as standard reference works in Islamic law; his collection is replete with such wonders as a beautifully illustrated copy of Niẓāmī’s Khamsah (MS RSPA 31), three separate copies of Rūmī’s Mas̱navī (MSS RSPA 34-41), and six manuscripts of works by Jāmī (MSS RSPA 46-50), including a Kulliyāt-i Jāmī (the complete, or collected, works of Jāmī; MS RSPA 46).

The opening of Jāmī's first collection of poems (Dīvān) in the centre with his Silsilat al-ẕahab in the margins. Copy dated Shaʻban 940/1534 (British Library RSPA 46, ff. 368v-369r)

In this blog post, however, I would like to shine a light on two of the most unusual and most difficult to classify manuscripts in the collection. Perhaps the most strikingly individual manuscript is MS RSPA 55, written on a mix of poor-quality coloured paper by a variety of hands. Impossible to classify or name, RSPA 55 is made up of miscellaneous segments of texts with no clear order or internal principles. Composed largely out of selections of poetry from a range of Persian authors, there are several sections which are devoted to the Dīvān-i ʻUrfī of the 16th century Indo-Persian poet ʻUrfī Shīrāzī, whose work is the most frequently reproduced in the manuscript.

Beyond ʻUrfī, there appears to be little to no rhyme nor reason behind the selections; there are anecdotes referring to Hārūn al-Rashīd followed immediately by a story of three travellers who share ten loaves, shortly after which we find a description of ten different kinds of script (Arabic, Greek, etc.), sayings in Persian by Plato and quotations in Arabic from the ḥadīth. This is all spread over just 4 folios, ff.87-91.

Excerpt from Miʻrāj al-khalīl by the Indo-Persian poet Tajallī (d. 1088/1677) who emigrated from Shiraz in the reign of Shah Jahan (British Library RSPA 55, f. 236v)

The manuscript continues to spool its way over 469 folios, replete with ghazals, rubāʿīs, letters, witticisms and anecdotes, as well as qaṣīdahs, mars̱īyahs and qiṭʻahs of varying renown; perhaps one of the most striking things about this hodge-podge manuscript is the number of lesser known poets among the ones quoted. Rarely today will students of Persian poetry study in depth (if at all) the Dīvān of, say, Ghanī Kāshmīrī, Mīrzā Jalāl Asīr, Fighānī or Āṣafī, all featured in this miscellany of poetry.

There is no clear indication from the manuscript of how (or why) Jones acquired the work and no reason to suppose he commissioned it. Indeed, there are no annotations on the manuscript that can positively be traced back to him; unusually, the manuscript does not even include title and author details at the beginning in his hand. Who assembled it, and perhaps more importantly why they did so in the way they did, remains, therefore every bit as much of a mystery as how it wound its way into the collections of an English puisne judge in Kolkata.

Jones also owned another miscellany of poetical works, MS RSPA 109. This very small manuscript, measuring only 200 x 65mm, is a collection of Arabic poetry about love, that Jones entitles Dīwān al-ʻāshiq, with the gloss, “A collection of Arabick poems some of which are extremely beautiful – Anthologia Amatoria.” Including poems written by a wide range of poets, including Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, Ibn Maṭrūḥ, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī and Maḥmūd ibn Fahd al-Ḥalabī. These poets come from all periods of Arabic literature, with perhaps a slightly greater number from the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods than from the earlier periods. This is indeed his only manuscript that would have provided him access to post-Abbasid poetry, as the majority of his Arabic poetry collection was composed of copies of the Muʻallaqāt and other pre-Islamic poetry (MSS RSPA 103-5 and 110), a copy of Abū Tammām’s Ḥamāsah (MS RSPA 106), the Dīwān of al-Mutanabbī (MS RSPA 107) and the Dīwān of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (MS RSPA 108).

Leaves from an anthology of Arabic love poetry, 18th century (British Library RSPA 109)

This manuscript also includes the only specimens of Turkish literature of the entire collection. Famously a scholar of Arabic and Persian, Jones’s scholarship is not so focused on Turkish (see Cannon, Life, 44-5). Whilst his letters make it clear he at one time viewed himself eligible for the role of ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, a job posting that never materialised, he only ever published one work of any significance on Turkish literature, this being “A Turkish Ode on the Spring,” a verse based upon Mesihi, which he augmented with a transliteration of the original and a prose translation. This poem and translation were found within Jones’s 1777 publication of Poems, consisting chiefly of translations from the Asiatick languages, before he embarked on his trip to India. In this anthology, however, which does mostly consist of Arabic poems, there are short extracts of poetry by Navāʼī, Nasīmī, Fahmī and others, in both Chagatay and Ottoman Turkish.

Beyond the poetry, the manuscript is also of interest for two further reasons. Firstly, it contains a number of folios dedicated to the writing out of glyphs for numbers of more than one digit, what appears to be several folios of handwriting practice and a folio which lists abbreviations found throughout the manuscript. Whose handwriting practice this is remains a mystery, especially given that the Turkish poetry and these miscellaneous pages were written in a hand different from the Arabic poems.

Finally, the manuscript also includes a page in English that names General John Carnac, a soldier in the East India Company and, later, after returning to India in 1773, a member of the council of Bombay (now Mumbai). This page is a short list of some of his eastern manuscripts with some brief descriptions; it seems likely that this manuscript once formed part of Carnac’s collection of manuscripts; we do not know whether Carnac himself commissioned the manuscript or if he purchased it. Carnac’s work in India did briefly take him to Bengal (in the 1760s), but by the time Jones was resident in India, Carnac was resident in Mumbai and then, Manguluru, both of which are on the western coast of the Indian subcontinent, along the Arabian Sea. It does not appear that Jones ever travelled to the western coast of India. Did Carnac bring the manuscript back to England and give it to Jones before India? Did they meet in India and exchange the manuscript? Did the manuscript go through others’ hands before Jones?

A former owner? General Carnac's name inscribed in Jones anthology of Arabic poetry (British Library RSPA 109)

It seems most probable that Carnac might have given Jones the manuscript in India, possibly in Bengal. In May 1787, for example, John Carnac, also a member of Jones’ Asiatic Society, despite being resident in Mumbai, gave six ancient plates to the society that he had come across (Asiatick Researches, 1:356). Unfortunately, MS RSPA 109 remains unmentioned in both Jones’ letters and the volumes of Asiatick Researches, but the interaction proves the two men certainly knew each other and were part of a broader culture among the English colonial officers of manuscript exchange.

These miscellanies, then, are two of the more curious aspects of the collection that both warrant further study and highlight the diverse nature of the collection. Jones was not only set about collecting classic works that today would form part of a Persian Poetry 101 class at university; instead, he was collecting literary works in a wide array of genres and styles, including these miscellaneous manuscripts that would have given him access to a great amount of literature not represented elsewhere in his collection.

Jonathan Lawrence, DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford, and former doctoral placement at the British Library


Further Reading

Lawrence, Jonathan, “Sir William Jones’ manuscript copy of al-Fatawa al-'Alamgiriyyah”
Society of Bengal, Asiatick Researches, Volume the First , London, 1799-1839.
Cannon, Garland, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones. Cambridge, 1990.
Dennison Ross, E. and Browne, E.G. Catalogue of Two Collections of Persian and Arabic Manuscripts Preserved in the India Office Library, London, 1902.
Jones, William Letters of Sir William Jones, ed. Garland Cannon, 2 v., Oxford, 1970.
——— Poems, consisting chiefly of translations from the Asiatick languages, London, 1777; second edition
Sitter, Zak, “William Jones, ‘Eastern Poetry’ and the Problem of Imitation” in Texas Studies in Language and Literature 50:4 (2008), pp 385-407

In this blogpost, we return to an item discussed last year on the British Library Conservation Care blog in Consider the Cover: Conserving a Chinese Book, when it was being prepared for the exhibition ‘Writing: Making Your Mark’ (26 April – 27 August 2019). We then learned about the story told by the book’s binding, and now we look closer at its contents and context within the dramatic events of 19^th-century China.

Zi bu ji jie on display in ‘Writing: Making Your Mark’ (2019). (15344.c.24) (Image credit: © Tony Antoniou)

Aside from being the second American Baptist missionary to set up in China and the first to establish a Protestant mission outside the foreign 'factory' corner  of Canton (Guangzhou), Issachar Roberts was also the religious teacher of Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全. Hong was the man who, in 1851, proclaimed himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ and led a 13-year rebellion against the Qing dynasty as ruler of the Taiping tianguo (太平天囯 ‘Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace’).

‘An Explanation of Radical Characters’

Zi bu ji jie is a short text which acts as a guide to the pronunciation and general category of meaning associated with each of the 214 Kangxi radicals (the classifiers used most famously in the dictionary completed in 1716, during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor). These descriptions seem to be taken, either wholly or in part, from entries in the Kangxi dictionary (康熙字典 Kangxi zidian), which in turn draws upon earlier sources such as the Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 and the Guangyun 廣韻.

Each entry gives the pronunciation first in the form of a homophone character, with variations in tone denoted by the position of a small circle, followed by a short definition in classical Chinese. The character 口 ‘mouth’, for example, is described as人所以言食也 “the means by which people speak and eat.”

The text may be classical in origin and formulaic in structure but it still reveals some of the context of its creation. For instance, it would appear that Roberts was unable to source a satisfactory definition of the eighth Kangxi radical 亠 ‘head’ and instead wrote: 亠字冇乜解法 “The character亠 has no explanation”, using local the Cantonese characters 冇乜 (= 沒有什麽 = ‘without any’).

A page from Zi bu ji jie (15344.c.24) containing local character variants.

The copy of this work held in the British Library is stamped with “I. J. Roberts” and also includes a handwritten dedication to another prominent missionary, Walter Medhurst, and the date “October 13^th, 1840”.

Little did the Reverend Roberts know when he published this ‘Explanation of Radical Characters’ that seven years later he would meet a ‘radical character’ of a very different kind.

‘Catechism in the Macao Dialect’

The first page of another of Roberts’ publications, Wen da su hua (15116.d.21).

Wen da su hua is translated as ‘Catechism in the Macao Dialect’ and serves as an introduction to Christian doctrine presented in the form of a series of questions and answers. Given its title and more vernacular style, it is not surprising that local characters feature once again. In addition to the frequent use of the character 乜 (= 什麽 = ‘what/any’) in the phrasing of the questions, you can also find the third person pronoun 佢 and the verb 係 ‘to be’, such as:

問，佢個仔係呌乜名呢。答，係呌耶穌。
“Question: What is the name of his [God’s] son? Answer: [He] is called Jesus.”

This publication also includes a map of Asia and other geographical descriptions, which has been said to reflect Roberts’s “interest in spreading knowledge about the world”, and may well have formed part of Hong Xiuquan’s educational syllabus when he studied under the missionary in 1847.

This volume is signed by the author with the character 孝 ‘The Filial’, which is part of Roberts’s Chinese name, Luo Xiaoquan (羅孝全). It also appears to have been gifted to someone, although the ink has bled and the name is obscured.

The hand-coloured map of Asia from inside Wen da su hua (15116.d.21).

‘The Chinese Revolutionist’

It is not clear whether these works were shown to Hong Xiuquan when he studied under Roberts in 1847. It seems likely that the catechism in particular may have been used, especially as Roberts himself refers to employing his own materials as well those prepared by other prominent missionaries. One thing we do know is that, despite his formal Christian education being cut short when his baptism was “postponed indefinitely”, the two months Hong spent with Roberts at his chapel in Canton (Guangzhou) had a profound and enduring effect on the soon-to-be Taiping leader and his ideology.

The meeting of Hong and Roberts was a turning point in Chinese history, falling halfway between two other crucial moments in the story of the Taiping rebellion. The first was in 1843, when Hong used certain Christian tracts as the basis for interpreting visions he had had following his fourth failure in the civil service examinations. Through this he perceived his divine purpose – to purge the earth of demons and idolatry – and lineage – as the second son of God and younger brother of Jesus Christ. The second crucial moment was on 11 January 1851, when he stood before thousands of his followers established himself as the leader, or Taiping Wang (太平王‘King of Great Peace’), of a rival Chinese dynasty.

In an article published in Putnam’s Monthly in October 1856, Roberts referred to both Hong’s examination failures and his postponed baptism as formative moments, or instances in which “all-wise Providence overruled”. He writes:

“Had he gained his literary degree, to become a mandarin under the Tartar rule would have been his highest aim; had he been baptized, to become an assistant preacher under his foreign teacher was the object in view; but now how widely different his present position!”

Roberts had been unaware of what had become of his one-time student until 1852 but spent much of the next eight years gathering support for the Taiping movement and trying to reach their capital at Nanjing (or Taijing 太京 ‘Heavenly Capital’, as it was known by the Taipings). Once there, he hoped to make use of his unique personal connection and the Christian fervour behind the rebellion in order to further his religious mission in China.

Detail from “Grand Plan for Missionary Increase” by I. J. Roberts, as published in the Primitive Church Magazine in January 1855. (P.P. 429)

Roberts expressed his support of the Taiping regime in a circular dated June 1854 entitled “Grand Plan for Missionary Increase in China”, which was published the following January in The Primitive Church Magazine. A bit of a rebel himself, he went as far as to challenge what he saw as the “unequal and oppressive” actions of the Mission Board (which had dismissed him in 1852) and propose an alternative “committee of co-operation” to be based among the Taipings at Nanjing. Although aware of the disparities between his own beliefs and those of the Taipings, he was convinced that he could convert them to “true Christianity” and claimed that: “the Tartar dynasty will become defunct and the Tae-ping dynasty will be established in its stead… the Christian religion will not only be tolerated but promoted throughout China”.

It was not until 1862 that, having reached Nanjing and spent more than a year among the Taipings, Roberts finally gave up on his “grand plan”. Hong continued to express deep respect for his former teacher, granting him the exclusive honour of a personal audience and issuing orders for his protection, but Roberts came to realise that their religious differences were both substantial and irreconcilable. He left Nanjing in January 1862, “thoroughly disgusted with their proceedings”.

Emma Harrison
Curator, Chinese Collections

Historical sources

Alexander Wylie, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese: Giving a list of their publications, and obituary notices of the deceased. With copious indexes. (American Presbyterian Mission Press: Shanghae [sic], 1867): pp. 94-97. (4766.dd.).

Issachar Jacox Roberts, “Tae Ping Wang” in Putnam's Monthly, v.8 (Jul-Dec 1856).

The Primitive Church Magazine , Volumes XI-XII. (Arthur Hall & Co.: London, 1854-55). (P.P.429)

 

Further reading

Yuan Chung Teng, “Reverend Issachar Jacox Roberts and the Taiping Rebellion”. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (November 1963): pp.55-67.

George Blackburn Pruden, Jr., Issachar Jacox Roberts and American Diplomacy in China during the Taiping Rebellion. PhD dissertation in modern history. (The American University, 1977).

Prescott Clarke and JS Gregory, Western reports on the Taiping: A Selection of Documents. (Australian National University Press: Canberra, 1982). (X.809/54928)

Jonathan D. Spence, God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. (W. W. Norton: New York, 1996). (YC.1996.b.6425)