Asian and African studies blog

Palm leaves have been a popular writing support in South and Southeast Asia for about two thousand years. In Thailand, palm leaf manuscripts were produced mostly for religious, literary and historical texts, but also for works relating to astronomy and astrology, law, history, and traditional and Buddhist medicine.

A royal edition of the Samantapāsādika-atthakathā-yojanā, British Library, Or 5107.

Both the palmyra and talipot palms were used for the production of manuscripts in Thailand. The palm leaves, which were first boiled and then dried and sometimes smoked or baked in a kiln before being written on, are robust and can last for as long as 600 years even in the humid, tropical climate of South and Southeast Asia. Each leaf contains between 3 to 5 lines of writing, but occasionally we also find miniature illustrations or gilt ornaments decorating the text. In central Thailand, the text was mostly written either in Thai or in Khom script, which is a variant of Khmer script used in Cambodia. The writing was usually incised with a hard wood or metal stylus, after which soot or lampblack mixed with oil was wiped onto the leaves and then wiped off again, leaving the black pigment only in the incisions. In rare cases, black ink was used to write the text on to the palm leaves with a bamboo pen or a brush.

A bundle of leaves, called phūk in Thai, was usually fastened together with two cotton cords, which were threaded through two holes pierced through the leaves of the entire manuscript. Title indicators made from wood, bamboo or ivory, with the title or a very brief description of the contents of the manuscript, were sometimes tied to a palm-leaf manuscript in order to identify the text(s) contained within.

Valuable manuscripts or important Buddhist works were protected from physical damage with wooden boards, which could be beautifully carved, gilded, lacquered, or decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay. Sometimes, palm leaf manuscripts were wrapped in cotton or silk cloth, or were kept in custom-made gilt and lacquered wooden cases to protect them from damage by rodents, insects or water.

Shown at the top of this page is a manuscript consisting of fifteen bundles of palm leaves that contains part of a commentary on the Vinaya-pitaka. The manuscript is in Pali language, but written in Khom (Khmer) script, and dates back to the nineteenth century, between 1824 and 1851 A.D. Each section of this important Buddhist work has magnificent title leaves with gilt and black lacquer decorations showing celestial figures (devata) and flowery patterns.


Detail of the front leaf of the third bundle of British Library, Or 5107.

The wooden covers of this manuscript are lacquered black, with patterns of leaves and flowers in mother-of-pearl inlay. The manuscript is stored in a red silk and cotton wrapper of Indian origin with a gold thread pattern, made to order for the Thai royal court. This manuscript is of the same high standard as manuscripts given to Wat Chetuphon in Bangkok by King Rama III.


Idyllic scenes from the heavenly Himavanta forest to accompany extracts from the Sutta-pitaka, painted on palm leaf. British Library, Or 16753.

This fragmented manuscript shown above dates back to the early nineteenth century. The Pāli text is written with black ink in Khom (Khmer) script which was used in central Thailand mainly for Buddhist texts in Pali or in Thai language. Painted illustrations on palm leaves are very rare. Their production required special skills and experiences which only painters working for the royal court were able to acquire, hence the outstanding quality of these miniature-sized paintings.


Covers belonging to a royal edition of the Paññāsa Jātaka, British Library, Or 12524. The wooden covers are decorated with black lacquer and gilt plant ornaments.

Extra-canonical birth tales of the Buddha, known as Paññāsa Jātaka are popular all over mainland Southeast Asia.  This 19th century manuscript consists of 469 palm leaves with gilt edges, in ten bundles. The text is written in Khom (Khmer) script.


Detail of the second leaf of the first bundle of British Library, Or 12524, showing a royal seal of King Rama IV.

The manuscript has gilded front and back leaves for every bundle. Each leaf following a front leaf has two oval illustrations; one on the left showing a heavenly vihāra, and one on the right showing the royal seal, depicting the crown between two parasols.


An ivory title indicator with a hand-woven title band for a Buddhist palm leaf manuscript containing an extract from the Patimokkha, the basic code of monastic discipline. John Rylands Library (Manchester), Pali MS 82.

This title indicator from the mid-nineteenth century is inscribed in Khom (Khmer) script, giving the title and number of palm-leaf bundles contained in the manuscript. It has a carved flowery design and a hole at one end to attach it to a rope that is wrapped around the manuscript. To the manuscript also belongs a piece of silk and cotton cloth similar to the one shown above in British Library Or 5107. The title band contains the same information as the ivory indicator. It has some similarities with Burmese sazigyo or woven title bands, but it is much shorter and attached to the same rope as the title indicator.

Title indicators and bands were important means of identifying manuscripts when these were stored together in huge wooden cabinets, often lavishly decorated with black or red lacquer, gilt, mother-of-pearl inlay or mirror glass inlay.


A wooden case from the 19th century with gilt and lacquer relief decorations showing heavenly deva figures (see detail below) and floral designs. The case was custom-made for one Buddhist palm-leaf manuscript, British Library Or.16820/B.


Detail from the wooden case above, showing a guardian figure or deva on a flowery background made from metal wire, lacquer and very thin gold leaf. The metal wire circles used to be decorated with mirror glass inlay which has been lost. British Library Or.16820/B.

There are three types of traditional manuscript storage caskets in Central Thailand: the single manuscript case, the chest and the cabinet. All three are usually made from wood, often beautifully carved or decorated with lacquer and gilt, or sometimes with intricate mother-of-pearl inlay. Cases for single manuscripts were specially made for valuable Buddhist works, such as manuscripts sponsored by members of the royal family or manuscripts that were produced for a special occasion like a monk’s ordination.

Further reading

Guy, John. Palm-leaf and paper, illustrated manuscripts of India and Southeast Asia. With an essay by O.P. Agrawal. Melbourne : National Gallery of Victoria, 1982

Kō̜ngkǣo Wīrapračhak. Khamphī bai lān chabap lūang nai samai Rattanakōsin. Bangkok: Krom Sinlapākō'n, 2527 [1987]

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

In an earlier communication we informed our readers about a far-reaching 3-year project funded by the Polonsky Foundation, which aims to digitise 1250 Hebrew manuscripts held at the British Library, making them available to a global audience (Opening up the Hebrew collection).
The first 45 Hebrew manuscripts that went live on the Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site last April (45 Hebrew manuscripts go digital) included chiefly Hebrew Bibles, such as the supremely significant London Codex dating from c. 9th century (Or 4445), and the elegant Golden Haggadah a medieval Passover liturgy sumptuously illuminated in Catalonia in the 14th century (Add MS 27210).

Detail of a miniature of the second plague, of frogs from the 'Golden Haggadah', Spain, 2nd quarter of the 14th century (British Library Add Ms 27210, f 12v)

Our devoted followers will be pleased to learn that our recent upload broadens the scope for discovery and research even further with over 300 Hebrew  manuscripts now online. The manuscripts included in the latest ingest present a wider diversity of subjects, thus, apart from Bibles and biblical commentaries, one will find liturgies, manuscripts of the Talmud (large corpus of Jewish law and tradition; includes the Mishnah and the Gemara), Talmudic commentaries, midrash (rabbinic commentary on the Hebrew scriptural text) and halakhah (the legal component of Talmudic literature).

There is additionally a greater variation of languages. Though a fair number were written in Hebrew, languages such as Aramaic, Arabic and Judeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew characters) are well represented. A good example of a Judeo-Arabic manuscript is Or 2220, a commentary on the Mishnaic order Mo’ed (Festivals) by the illustrious Jewish sage Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) which was penned in the 15th century in Yemen. Noteworthy too are the handwriting styles employed in these handwritten books, with square, semi-cursive and cursive Hebrew scripts peculiar to the geographic areas the scribes originated from. Add MS 26992, Tikune ha-Ri”f, a legal work by Abraham ben Shabbatai Del Vechio (d. 1654) written apparently during his lifetime, provides a fine example of an Italian cursive type of Hebrew writing. A Sephardi semi-cursive Hebrew hand can be identified in Harley MS 5719, a 15th century manuscript copy of the Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Law), the legal code Maimonides composed between 1068 and 1078 while living in Fustat (Old Cairo), Egypt. Or 2220 mentioned earlier provides a good specimen of a semi-cursive Yemenite hand.

Among the uploaded manuscripts there are significant Karaite biblical commentaries and Karaite works dealing with religious legal matters that will form the subject of a future blog. For a full list of the manuscripts that are now online, please follow this link (Hebrew digitised mss_November 2014). Note that if the hyperlinks don't appear to work, you should refresh your browser.

The present upload features a considerable number of decorated and illuminated pieces representing all the schools of Hebrew manuscript painting that thrived in Europe between the 13th and 15th centuries. A beautiful two-volume Bible with subtly coloured illuminations is a telling example of Hebrew manuscript art that developed in Italy in the last quarter of the 13th century.

Menorah (Temple Candelabrum) flanked by foliate scrolls inhabited by animals and hybrids. Italy (Rome or Bologna?)  (British Library Harley MS 5710, f.136r)


A splendid example of the art that developed particularly in Southern Germany in the Lake Constance area during the 14th century is found in the Tripartite Mahzor, a festival prayer book for Shavu’ot (Festival of Weeks) and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). This is in fact the second volume of a three-volume manuscript. Volumes one and three are kept respectively in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest (Kaufmann Collection MS A384) and in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Michael 619).

Historiated word panel depicting Moses, at left, receiving the Tablets of the Law on Mount Sinai, with Aron and the Israelites standing in prayer. Trumpets and rams’ horns pierce through the clouds, marking the occasion. The gilded word Adon in the centre of the panel opens the liturgical poem ‘The Lord has taken care of me’ which is recited during Shavu’ot, a festival celebrating the giving of the Torah to the Israelites. Germany, c.1322 (British Library Add MS 22413, f. 3r)



Decorated word panel showing a man with a pitcher and a cup at the opening of a liturgical poem. Germany, c. 1322. (British Library Add MS 22413, f. 148r)

An additional specimen from the German school of Hebrew illumination is the beautifully executed Coburg Pentateuch which was produced c. 1396. Beside the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) it comprises the Five Scrolls, Haftarot (weekly readings from the Prophets) and grammatical treatises. The text of the Pentateuch was penned in an Ashkenazi square script by a master scribe named Simhah Levi, while the vocalization was done by Samuel bar Abraham of Molerstadt. The other textual parts in the codex were penned and vocalised by other scribes.


King Solomon, famed for his justice and wisdom is depicted seating on a throne shaped like the roof of a building. At his feet there are several animals, most likely hinting at his ability to converse with the animal kingdom. Coburg, Germany, c. 1396 (British Library Add MS 19776, f. 54v)


A magnificently illuminated codex crafted in France in the 13th century is the North French Hebrew Miscellany. It was written by Benjamin the Scribe, whose name appears four times in the manuscript. The absence of a colophon has led scholars to assume that the scribe wrote the manuscript for his personal use. This was common practice among medieval educated Jews who often copied important Hebrew texts for their own libraries. There are eighty-four different groups of texts in this codex including dozens of poems, the liturgy of the entire year, calendars, and the earliest complete Hebrew version of Tobit. According to scholarly research the 49 full-page miniatures depicting biblical characters and narratives were executed by Christian artists attached to three major contemporary Parisian ateliers.


David and Goliath. France, 1278-1298. (British Library Add MS 11639, f. 523v)

Aaron the Priest pouring oil in the Candelabrum. France, 1278-1298 (British Library Add MS 11639, f. 114r)


From the Portuguese school of Hebrew manuscript painting comes the Lisbon Bible, a three volume manuscript which was copied by Samuel ben Samuel Ibn Musa for Joseph ben Judah called Elhakim in 1482. The finely painted illuminations enhanced by gold leaf were executed by a team of skilled craftsmen in a Lisbon workshop which was active for the three decades preceding the expulsion of the Portuguese Jewry in 1497. The manuscript was sold to the British Museum in 1882, but nothing is known about its location and owners after 1482 until the year it was purchased by the British Museum.  

Beginning of the Book of Genesis with foliate motifs and Masoretic notation outlined in micrography. Lisbon, 1482 (British Library Or 2626, f. 23v)


The uploading process is on-going and by the end of this month users and researchers everywhere will be able to access digitally 400 out of the 1250 manuscripts included in the project. Please watch this space for details of the next batch of Hebrew handwritten books due to go live in the next few weeks!

Ilana Tahan
Lead Curator Hebrew and Christian Orient Studies 

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British libraries and museums hold some of the oldest and most important manuscripts in Malay and other Indonesian languages in the world. Although small by comparison with manuscript holdings in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Netherlands, British collections are especially notable for their antiquity and, in some cases, contain unique copies of important texts.  

New Edition of Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain (Jakarta, 2014), the front cover design based on the wadana (illuminated frame) from the Javanese manuscript Serat Jayalengkara Wulang shown below.

Serat Jayalengkara Wulang, Javanese manuscript copied at the court of Yogyakarta in 1803. One of the many Indonesian manuscripts described in Ricklefs and Voorhoeve (1977: 61), and which has just been digitised. British Library, MSS Jav 24, ff.111v-112r.

The publication in 1977 of Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain: a catalogue of manuscripts in Indonesian languages in British public collections, by M.C. Ricklefs & P. Voorhoeve (Oxford University Press), was a landmark event. Merle Ricklefs, whose main interest was in Javanese, was at the time Lecturer in the History of Southeast Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Petrus Voorhoeve (1899-1995) was formerly Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts at Leiden University Library, and a great expert on the languages of Sumatra – ranging from Acehnese and the various Batak dialects in the north to Lampung and Rejang in the south – as well as on Malay and Arabic. The catalogue listed over 1,200 manuscripts in the indigenous languages of Indonesia (except Papua), Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and the Philippines, including those in Cham and Malagasy, found in British public collections. Catalogue entries included names of authors, scribes, owners and collectors, dates and places of writing, watermarks and paper. The 1977 volume was soon followed by an Addenda et corrigenda, published in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1982, listing a further 92 manuscripts.

When I joined the British Library in 1986, I very soon became aware of how difficult my task as Curator for Maritime Southeast Asia would have been without the helping hand of ‘Ricklefs & Voorhoeve’.  As the indispensible guide to the British Library’s own collection of nearly five hundred manuscripts in Malay, Javanese, Balinese, Batak, Bugis, Makasarese, Old Javanese, I found myself consulting the book on a daily basis in order to answer enquiries about the British Library collections, and to select and describe manuscripts for exhibition, and, more recently, for digitisation.

Front cover of Ricklefs & Voorhoeve (1977).

While ‘Ricklefs & Voorhoeve’ continued to be of enormous value to scholars of the languages, literatures, cultures and history of maritime Southeast Asia, it became increasingly difficult to find a copy in bookshops. And so in March 2013, Arlo Griffiths, director of the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient in Jakarta, agreed to republish the catalogue in the EFEO’s valuable series Naskah dan Dokumen Nusantara (Manuscripts and documents from maritime Southeast Asia). The New Edition, which was published in Jakarta last month by EFEO in collaboration with Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia, and with the support of the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia and the British Library, presents facsimiles of the original 1977 catalogue and the Addenda et corrigenda of 1982, together with a new supplement of 2014 describing 155 manuscripts not included in the previous editions.

The 155 additional manuscripts cover the following languages: Balinese (15), Batak (11), Bugis (2), Cham (1), Javanese (31), Maguindanao (1), Malay (86), Minangkabau (2), Old Javanese (5) and Tausug (1).  Nearly three-quarters of the total (114) are held in the British Library, and include both long-held but newly-documented manuscripts in Austronesian languages - such as the treaties in Tausug and Malay signed with the sultanate of Sulu in the 1760s, and vocabulary lists in various Indonesian languages collected by servants of the East India Company - and recent acquisitions, such as two Malay manuscripts of Sejarah Melayu and Hikayat Hang Tuah transferred to the British Library from the University of Lampeter in Wales in 2003. Notable finds in other institutions include four Batak manuscripts acquired by the University of Hull from the estate of Dr Harry Parkin - author of Batak fruit of Hindu thought (1978) - and now held in the Hull History Centre; six Malay and one Balinese manuscript formerly belonging to Sir Harold Bailey and now in the Ancient India and Iran Trust in Cambridge; and a Malay manuscript of Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiah in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Shown below are some of the newly-described manuscripts.

Illustrated Balinese manuscript on palm leaf with scenes from Ādiparwa, with the (unusual) use of red pigment in addition to black ink. Acquired in Bali in late 1938 by George and Ethel Fasal and donated by their daughter Jenny Fasal in 2010. British Library, Or.16802, f.4r (detail).

Panji romance, Javanese manuscript with 39 coloured drawings, dated 7 May 1861. British Library, Or.15026, ff.188v-189r. 

Genealogical chart in the form of a tree of the rulers of Java, from Adam to Pakuwana IV (of Surakarta) and Mataram IV (Hamengkubuwana IV of Yogykarta), in a Javanese manuscript, Papakem Pawukon, said to have come from Kyai Suradimanggala, Bupati sepuh of Demak, 1814/5. Formerly from the India Office Library collection. British Library, Or.15932, f.72r.

Pustaha, Batak manuscript of Simalungun provenance, written on folded treebark, containing Poda ni suman-suman ma inon, instructions on the art of controlling forces by invoking the supernatural. British Library, Or.14808, f.a 27.

Malay manuscript of Sejarah Melayu, 'Malay Annals', with an ownership note of D.F.A. Hervey, 1 May 1876. Ancient India and Iran Trust, Malay 1.

References:

M.C.Ricklefs & P.Voorhoeve, Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain: a catalogue of manuscripts in Indonesian languages in British public collections.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

M.C.Ricklefs & P.Voorhoeve, Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain: addenda et corrigenda.  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1982, Vol.XLV, Part 2, pp.300-322.

M.C.Ricklefs, P.Voorhoeve† & Annabel Teh Gallop, Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain: a catalogue of manuscripts in Indonesian languages in British public collections. New Edition with Addenda et Corrigenda. Jakarta: Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia, Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia, 2014.  (Naskah dan Dokumen Nusantara; XXXIII). ISBN France 978-2-85539-189-2.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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Even if the attendant or station inspector had shouted ‘Mind the Gap’ (the phrase first used in 1969 at rail stations in the United Kingdom), it would not have prevented the horrific accident that befell Sir Donald Friell McLeod at the railway station at Gloucester Road in 1872. Arriving at the Metropolitan Line platform on 28 November, the station inspector told McLeod that he was too late to catch the train heading towards South Kensington; moments later, he shouted ‘stop, you will be run over’ (London Standard, 3 December 1872).

In investigating the accident, the Belfast News wrote on 4 December, ‘It seems that he must have attempted to enter his compartment while the carriages were already in motion, and that, falling with the sudden and violent movement of the train, he was dragged along for several yards. The right arm, which probably to the last had retained its hold upon the platform and footboards, was uninjured. But the left arm and both legs were nearly severed from the body, although the train was stopped with praiseworthy promptitude.’ Sir Donald McLeod, formerly the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab (1865-70), died at St George’s Hospital later that day.

As an important figure in Anglo-Indian history, McLeod spent the majority of his life in the subcontinent. Born in Calcutta in 1810, he was the younger son of Lieutenant-General Duncan McLeod (d.1856) of the Bengal Engineers. When he was only 4 years old, McLeod was sent to the Scottish Highlands and raised by his grandfather. Educated in Edinburgh and London, he went on to attend the prestigious East India College at Haileybury before returning to Calcutta in 1828. McLeod entered into service for the East India Company and served as the Judicial Commissioner of the British Punjab in 1854 and ultimately as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab between 1865-70. A devout Christian, McLeod committed his life to various philanthropic projects including helping to establish the University of Punjab (Lahore), also known as the Lahore Oriental University.

Lt. Governor [Sir Donald McLeod] and others, Murree, 1865. British Library, Photo 211/1(61). In the front row: Mr. Robert, Reverend Dr. George Edward Lynch Cotton, Sir Donald McLeod, Captain Alexander Taylor, and Major-General Edward John Lake.

Whilst living in the Punjab, the stories of McLeod’s philanthropy and devoutness captivated the locals. According to the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ‘cheap coloured lithographs circulated in Lahore showing him seated as a holy man being venerated by Sikh ascetics’. Although I could not locate a lithograph of the subject, I was surprised to locate a painting of the exact subject in the Wellcome Collection (London). In the scene below, the artist depicted Sir Donald McLeod seated on a cushion with his legs crossed and with his head encircled in a nimbus and accompanied by putti; these attributes, along with the attendant holding a flywhisk, which is of course an insigna of royalty, are suggestive that the artist or patron revered McLeod as royalty.

Sir Donald Friell McLeod surrounded by admiring Sikh elders, c. 1870. Wellcome Library, London.

Local artists continued to be fascinated with McLeod, even after his return to England. A fascinating yet somewhat peculiar painting substantiates this claim. A painting in the British Library, by a Sikh artist, depicts the artist’s interpretation of the horrific accident at Gloucester Road station. While incident reports as well as obituaries in UK newspapers provided detailed accounts on McLeod’s death, the story must have been printed in either local English or Punjabi newspapers in Lahore.

The accident that befell Sir Donald Friell McLeod at Gloucester Road underground station, 1872, and its aftermath. By a Punjab artist, c.1885. Water-colour heightened with bodycolour and gold, on paper laid on card; 342 by 482 mm. British Library, Add.Or.5266.

In the painting (above), we see the artist’s personal interpretation and understanding of the details of the accident. In the lower left corner, four members of the British public have come to McLeod’s aide and assist to remove him from the railway track. In nearby train carriages, curiously both British and Punjabi-Sikh figures observe the accident. The story continues to unfold with McLeod being transferred to the tent (middle-right) where British political aides tend to the injured. Based on the photograph of McLeod taken at Murree (at top), I wonder if the three men closest to McLeod are the Judicial Commissioner Mr. Roberts, Captain Alexander Taylor (holding McLeod) and the Right Reverend Dr. George Edward Lynch Cotton (d.1866)? From this point, the viewer’s focus is directed to the upper left corner of the painting where Sikh ascetics and members of the prestigious Akali Sikh military order bid farewell to McLeod who is carried away by angels on a palanquin.

Detail of the painting

As McLeod passed away within hours after the accident and was  buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London, it is rather strange and curious that the artist transported the incident to the Punjab, where both Punjabi-Sikhs and British officers witnessed the event and were with him during his final moments. However, as the local community revered Sir Donald Friell McLeod, the painting is  appropriate to commemorate McLeod.

Further reading:

Katherine Prior, ‘McLeod, Sir Donald Friell (1810–1872)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17669, accessed 12 Aug 2014]

Susan Stronge (ed), The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms, Victoria and Albert Museum Publications, 1999.

Malini Roy, Visual Arts Curator

Visitors to the Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library may have encountered our display of Indian paintings next to the entrance to the Magna Carta. As part of the conservation programme, the paintings are rotated every few months.  If you missed the display on the portraits of rulers of Rajasthan, you can still view a selection on the Asian and African Studies Blog.

Selecting paintings to display is no easy task: the library’s collection holds a diverse range of Indian paintings that date mainly from the 16-19^th centuries. Popular genres and themes for the display can be drawn from portrait studies, illustrations to literary themes, religious subjects and from the 19^th century onwards on architecture. In consultation with exhibitions and conservation, the selection is placed into the gallery.

The theme for the current selection is ‘Art of the Book’ and includes elegant visualisations of the ever so popular Hindu deity Krishna with his beloved Radha, Prince Rama and his brother Lakshman pinned by serpentine arrows, and illustrations to the Indian classical music known as ragamala (garland of musical modes). Some of the highlights are featured below:

Rama and Laksmana are pinned by serpentine arrows.  By a Pahari artist from Bahu or Kulu, from the Shangri Ramayana, Style III, circa 1700-10.  186 by 290 mm; page 215 x 316 mm. Add.Or.5696, acquired 2010. - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2014/01/pahari-paintings-at-the-british-library.html#sthash.Kf5yXor6.dpuf

Radha makes love to Krishna by a grove. An illustration to a Rasakapriya of Keshav Das. Kangra, c.1820. Attributed to Purkhu and his school. Add.Or.26
 

Vasanta Ragini, Murshidabad (Bengal, India), c. 1760. Johnson Album 36,8.

The Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library hosts a permanent free display of the library's greatest treasures. It is usually open 7 days a week.

Additional material held in the Visual Arts department at the British Library can be viewed by appointment in the Print Room (Asian & African Studies Reading Room). Please email [email protected] for an appointment. The Print Room is generally open Monday-Friday, from 2-5pm.

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An Album of Maratha and Deccani Paintings - Add.21475, part 2

In a previous post (April 2014), I looked at the first three paintings in this album and explored the connections between the Maratha court in Poona and Jaipur artists.  The remaining five paintings in the album are all from a large Hyderabad-type series of the Rasikapriya, the classic text by Keshavdas on Hindi poetics that the author wrote at Orccha in 1594 for Kunwar Indrajit Singh, the brother of the ruler Raja Ram Shah of Orccha (1592-1605).  Although a literary work, it was written in the context of the Vaishnava revival in northern and western India in the 16^th century.  Keshavdas took the love of Krishna and Radha out of the pastoral settings of the Gita Govinda and placed it in a courtly ambience.  He used their relationship to explore all the different kinds of literary heroes and heroines and the erotic sentiment (sringara rasa) in all its variety.

A complete set of illustrations to this text involves several hundred paintings.  Our album contains only five such paintings. If there were more, their whereabouts is not now known.   Originally the Hindi verses were inscribed in nagari in a separate box above the paintings and text and paintings were contained within gilded and coloured ruled lines, but for some reason the original text panels were cut out and replaced with other panel pasted down from the reverse.  The remains of the tops of the original aksaras are visible only on folio 7.  The pictures are not particularly specific and their subjects could apply to many of the verses and situations in the text.   On the reverse of each folio are inscribed brief Hindi labels for the subject of the painting taken from Keshavdas together with a number different from that associated with the relevant verse in its chapter in the printed editions, and a written out Persian numbering.  As noted in the earlier post, all the paintings were at some time removed from their original album pages and let into European paper frames.

Two of the paintings (ff. 4 and 8) have an oversize Krishna as the hero or nayaka, wearing a tall golden crown, which serves to locate the provenance of the paintings as southern, as do the large white palatial buildings in the background which resemble those in the Johnson Hyderabad Ragamala in the British Library of c. 1760 (J. 37, Falk and Archer 1981, no. 426).  The style of the paintings will be discussed later after dealing with the subject matter.  The inscription on the reverse is here taken as the title of the painting.  For the complete text and translation of the verses of the Rasikapriya, along with numerous examples of their illustrations, see Dehejia 2013.

 
Nayaka ko prakasa biyoga sringara, Krishna’s ‘open’ love in separation (Rasikapriya 1, 27-28).  301 x 217 mm.  Deccan, perhaps Aurangabad, 1720-30. British Library, Add.21475, f.4

The verses on folio 4 come from the conclusion of the opening chapter, in which Keshavdas makes some general remarks about the emotion of romantic love and its two major varieties, love in union and love in separation.  Keshavdas divides his descriptive verses into ‘open’ (prakasa) or clear and ‘hidden’ (prachanna) or more suggestive.  Here the sakhi (confidante) has been to see Krishna and describes him to Radha:  ‘He is totally unresponsive and has stopped eating and drinking.  All of Braj is concerned about him and you are sitting here unconcerned.  Get up and do something about it.  This is the result of his longing for you.’  The artist shows Krishna sitting mournful and unresponsive in one pavilion while the sakhi tries to talk to him and then she goes off to find Radha, who is meant to be some way away in another pavilion.

Ajnata yauvana, a youthful maiden unaware of her own flowering.  336 x 257 mm. Deccan, perhaps Aurangabad, 1720-30. British Library, Add.21475, f.5

The term on the reverse of folio 5, ajnata yauvana, a youthful maiden unaware of her own flowering, comes not from the Rasikapriya but from Bhanudatta’s Rasamanjari, an earlier work in Sanskrit on the same topic.  Similarly the verse above our painting is not found in Keshavdas’s work, where the relevant verses (3, 20-21) speak about a navayauvana mugdha nayika, a maiden newly grown to adolescence.  Their purport is the same:  her waist is slimmer, her hips have expanded, her gait is more steady but she does not know why this should be so.  Chapter 3 of the Rasikapriya deals with the different types of heroine or nayika, which are classified in various ways.  The artist shows the maiden sitting by a pool populated by ducks in an extensive meadow while her confidante tries to reassure her about what is happening to her body. A girl standing with flower wands perhaps signifies her impending marriage.   In the distance is a white palace set beside a garden.

Nayaka ko prachanna sravana darsana, Radha’s hidden meeting [with her lover] through hearing [his name] (Rasikapriya 4, 15).  331 x 246 mm.  Deccan, perhaps Aurangabad, 1720-30. British Library, Add.21475, f.6

The verse for this painting comes from the fourth chapter, on how lovers meet:  in person, through a portrait, in a dream or through hearing the other’s name.  Radha chides her sakhi for speaking of Krishna for she does not know what to do now that Krishna is so enshrined in her heart.  The artist shows Radha sitting under a canopy with her friends in a meadow with what appear to be flamingos in a pond in the foreground.

Radha ko prachanna citra darsana, Radha’s hidden meeting [with her lover] through a painting (Rasikapriya 4, 8).  335 x 250 mm.  Deccan, perhaps Aurangabad, 1720-30. British Library, Add.21475, f.7

From the same chapter 4, the nayika can ‘meet’ her lover through seeing his portrait.  Radha’s mind was filled with love on seeing her beloved’s portrait, but her shyness caused her to tremble.  She is shown holding a portrait and sitting on a carpeted terrace with her friends in front of a palace with flamingos again in the foreground.

Madhya adhira nayika, the plain speaking experienced heroine (Rasikapriya 3, 48).  340 x 250 mm. Deccan, perhaps Aurangabad, 1720-30. British Library, Add.21475, f.8

In chapter 3, heroines can be mugdha, madhya or praudha (adolescent, experienced or mature).  The madhya heroine is subdivided various ways, of which one is according to the way she speaks to her lover, which can be dhira, adhira or adiradhira (firmly, harshly or scoldingly).  Here the heroine is unable to restrain her indignation at her lover’s fickleness and speaks harshly to him with words capable of two meanings: “Your body is like that of your father [for just as he shakes on account of old age so do you tremble for fear that your secrets will be out].  In strength you resemble your brother Balaram [for just as he is intoxicated with wine you are intoxicated with love].  Your face is like your mother’s [she has a tilak on her forehead and you have a love mark] and just as her mind is full of motherly love you are infatuated with thoughts of love.  Your temperament is stable like that of the earth [for you are able to sustain the frailties of others].  Your mind is restless like the wind and pure like water.  Your mouth [on account of chewing betel] is red like fire.  As is the sky full of space and sound, you who are dark as the cloud and your words that speak of your misdeeds prevail in every home.  Like Rati [the consort of Kamdev] is your love [for separation torments you as it affected her].  Your form is pleasing like that of Rati’s lord.  Tell me, Lord, how did you learn to speak such lies?” (adapted from Dehejia 2013, p. 60).

The artist sets the scene in the countryside with a pavilion in which Radha is upbraiding Krishna for his fickleness.  Beside the stream with its birds and flowers in the foreground a cowherd is milking a cow, with a gopi standingready to churn the milk into butter, while on the hill in the background a prince, presumably meant to be Balarama as he is white, is sitting with a woman.  The latter reference is easy to pick up, although there is no sign of wine, but the pastoral activity in the foreground is possibly a reference to Krishna’s being like the earth.

The style of the five paintings in our album relates to eighteenth century Hindu Hyderabadi painting, in which Krishna wears the tall crown typical of that style.

 
Krishna, a peacock, cows and a devotee.  Hyderabad, c. 1770.  British Library, J.45,39.

See Falk and Archer 1981, no. 472iv for another example of this style.  Some of the most important paintings from 18^th century Hyderabad are found in a group of Ragamala sets, of which Richard Johnson’s album in the British Library J.37 is typical.

Vasant raga from the Hyderabad Ragamala, Hyderabad, c. 1760.  British Library, J.37, 6.

Exquisite figures male and female disport themselves on palatial terraces or in idyllic visions of the country.  This fine set of 36 paintings was collected by Johnson during his appointment as Resident at the court of Nizam ‘Ali Khan in Hyderabad from 1784-85.  Nizam ‘Ali (1762-1802) was a patron of music, poetry and painting and Johnson apparently came to know him well, since he was constantly espousing the Nizam’s interests as against those of his superiors in Calcutta which resulted in his early recall.  These sets are famous among other things for their perspective views of architecture with semi-naturalistic vanishing points, in contrast to our album paintings where all the buildings are viewed frontally.  Nonetheless it is possible to see the resemblances in the architecture:  the white chunam-covered buildings tend to have a tall ground storey with smaller pavilions on top.  The beautiful canopied pavilion on folio 6 is also found several times in the Ragamala set.  Yet the treatment of landscape, flowers and birds do differ, for here in the album the artist is very free.  By the 1760s the Hyderabad landscape style was turning harder with conceptualised hills and meadows criss-crossing each other to suggest depth, while our artist takes a more naturalistic approach to recession, as in the exquisite meadow of folio 6 and in the various naturalistic clumps of flowers as opposed to the regimented rows in the Ragamala.  More open landscapes were a feature of Deccani painting in the first quarter of the 18^th century (see Zebrowski 1983, ch. 11) and it is at the end of that period that our five album paintings seem best placed.  Bold distortion of forms in our album as in the overlarge Krishna figure, the tiny steps and minuscule foreground trees are all features found in the earlier style. Only one other painting has so far been identified as related to the style of our five paintings, showing a prince seated on a carpet amidst flowers and miniscule trees in a meadow leading back as in f.5 of our set to white palatial buildings on the horizon.  This was formerly in the William K. Ehrenfeld collection in San Francisco (Ehnbom 1985, no. 36, where it is called Golconda, 1660-70) and its whereabouts is not now known.

As to the set’s patron, the fall of Bijapur and Golconda to Aurangzeb in 1686-87 released many of their artists for patronage elsewhere, as is well known for various Rajput courts, but many others stayed locally to work for the local nobility of the former Golconda kingdom as well as for Mughal or Rajput patrons depending on their appointments to positions within the new Mughal subahs of the Deccan.  Aurangabad (now in western Maharashtra) remained the principal Mughal capital in the Deccan and even Asaf Jah, the first Nizam of the newly independent Hyderabad state from 1724, was based there before his successors moved the capital to Hyderabad.  This distinctness from Hyderabad proper is perhaps reflected in the Hindu costume of skirt, bodice and orhni worn by nearly all the women as distinct from the more Muslim costume (paijama and peshwaj) of the Hyderabad Ragamala sets done later under Nizam ‘Ali’s patronage.  A provenance from Maharashtra would thus put the five paintings within the orbit of the Peshwas based at Poona and link them to the other three paintings in the album.

Further reading:

Dehejia, Harsha V., Rasikapriya: Ritikavya of Keshavdas in Ateliers of Love, DK Printworld, New Delhi, 2013

Ehnbom, D., Indian Miniatures:  the Ehrenfeld Collection, American Federation of Arts, New York, 1985

Falk, T., and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1981

Losty, J.P., http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2014/04/an-album-of-maratha-and-deccani-paintings-part-1.html

Zebrowski, M., Deccani Painting, Sotheby Publications, University of California Press, London and Los Angeles, 1983

J.P. Losty, Curator of Visual Arts (Emeritus)

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An Album of Maratha and Deccani Paintings - part 1

I recently wrote about how the Indonesian and Malay manuscript collections digitised through the Endangered Archives Programme are changing our perceptions of the written landscape of maritime Southeast Asia.  Today I would like to focus on one genre of Islamic manuscripts from the Malay world previously all but unrepresented in any British collection. These are manuscripts containing khutbah, or sermons, written in Arabic with occasional elements in Malay, designed to be read at the Friday congregational prayer or on special occasions such as marriages or the two great feasts of Islam: Id al-Adha, the feast of the Sacrifice, and Id al-Fitr, at the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan. The British Library holds just one khutbah manuscript from Southeast Asia, acquired in 1990 (Or.15924).  It is written in scroll form, with rather garish illuminated frames and a cloth headpiece, and is stored in a bamboo container.  The presence of a very similar example in the Mataram Museum suggests a Lombok provenance. 

Sermon in scroll form, with illuminated frames, probably from Lombok, ca.19th c.  British Library, Or. 15924.

In early Islamic states, the mention of a ruler’s name in the sermon was one of the two prerogatives of a Muslim sovereign (the other being the right to mint coins).  Elizabeth Lambourn (2008 & 2011) has recently highlighted how the offer to cite a ruler’s name in the Friday sermon could be used as a bargaining tool in negotiations between the great Islamic empires and the coastal communities that fringed the Indian Ocean: khutbah were traded for cannon.  The research project Islam, Trade and Politics across the Indian Ocean, investigating Ottoman links with Southeast Asia, has found evidence that the citation of the Ottoman sultan’s name in sermons was used by Malay rulers in the late 19th century to support claims to Ottoman overlordship and thence entitlement to protection against western colonial powers. 

The first Islamic sermons from Southeast Asia to be published originate from Sulu in the southern Philippines.  One is a Friday sermon and the other a sermon for the feast of Ramadan, copied in 1903 and citing the name of Sultan Muhammad ‘Pudhalun’ (Fadl) (r.1824-1862), son of the late Muhammad Jamalul Kiram (r.1823-1842), and asking for blessings on former sultans of Sulu. As seen from photographs published in 1905 by the Lebanese-American scholar Najib Saleeby (1973: 101-107, Plates XI-XVI), each sermon was written in book form with the first two pages set in beautiful decorative frames.

It was only with the arrival in the British Library of digitised collections of Indonesian manuscripts through the Endangered Archives Programme that large numbers of khutbah manuscripts from Southeast Asia are at last available for study.  Project EAP329: Digitising private collections of Acehnese manuscripts located in Pidie and Aceh Besar regencies, led by Dr Fakhriati M. Thahir, includes three volumes of khutbah from Aceh. 

Sermon for Ramadhan, from an illuminated compilation of khutbah texts. Unusually (but not unprecedentedly) for a MS from Aceh, this has some headings in Javanese. EAP329/1/62.

More significant, though, is project EAP276: Documentation and preservation of Ambon manuscripts, led by Prof. Titik Pudjiastuti of Universitas Indonesia, which digitised 12 private collections of 182 mostly Islamic manuscripts in Ambon and the neighbouring island of Haruku in the Moluccas, of which no fewer than 45 are sermons. Intriguingly, just like the Lombok sermon in the BL and in contrast to the Aceh sermons, all are scrolls, which is actually a very unusual format for manuscripts in the Malay world. Said to date from the 18th to the 20th centuries, many are relatively recent, with one sermon dated 2002.  Yet of the earlier sermons, it is notable that some cite the names of sultans of Ternate dating from the 17th back to the late 14th centuries, suggesting the preservation of a much older tradition, and one which will repay further study.  Reproduced below is a selection of khutbah manuscripts from Ambon.

Map of Ambon on the left-hand page, with the Banda islands on the right-hand page. Livro do Estado da India Oriental, by Pedro Barreto de Resende, 1646.  British Library, Sloane MS 197, ff.397v-398r. 

Sermon for Id al-Fitr, with pink headcloth and bamboo case, written by Rahman Ali Salampessy, late 20th c.  At the beginning, the writer has used small circles to indicate the number of times the takbir (the phrase Allah Akbar, ‘God is greatest’) should be repeated at the start of the sermon: seven times in the second line, and five times in the third line.  EAP276/8/5.


Friday sermon headed by the Indonesian state arms, also by Rahman Ali Salampessy, dated 28 August 1990. EAP276/8/4.

Colophon of a sermon on dogs written by Imam Alibi in 2002 (yang menulis ini khutba Imam Alibi Wa'ila 'alim bangsa Ripamuli pada tahun 2002 pada bulan Rabiulawal pada binatang anjing pelaku tiga naskah pada tahun jim akhir), from the Basri Ripamole Collection.  EAP276/4/1.

Sermon in Arabic with interlinear translation in Malay, 19th c., from the collection of Husain Hatuwe. EAP276/7/61.


Sermon from Ambon, citing the grandiose titles of the ruler and the names of his forebears, all sultans of Ternate (the reign dates are taken from The Royal Ark by Christopher Buyers):
ibn al-Sultan Ali Manzar Syah (this may refer to Sultan Muzafar, who ruled from 1607-1627, or to his son Sultan Mandar Syah, r.1648-1675)
ibn al-Sultan Saiduddin Syah (r.1583-1606)
ibn al-Sultan Babullah Zat Syah (r.1570-1583)
ibn al-Sultan Khair Jamil Syah (r.1535-1570)
ibn al-Sultan Bayan Sirrullah (r.1500-1522)
ibn Zainal Abidin Syah al-marhum (r.1486-1500)
ibn al-Sultan Amir al-Mu’minin Iskandar Zulkarnain Zat Syah
From the collection of Sarajudin Hatuina, Ambon.  EAP276/11/15. 

Sermon for Id al-Fitr on 1 Muharam, citing a similar chain of Ternate sultans, from the collection of Husain Hatuwe, Ambon. EAP276/7/38.

Further reading

Christopher Buyers, 'Ternate',  The Royal Ark.

Elizabeth Lambourn. ‘India from Aden – Khutba and Muslim Urban Networks in Late Thirteenth-Century India’, in Secondary Cities and Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm c. 1000-1800, ed. Kenneth Hall. Lanham: Lexington, 2008, pp. 55-97.

Elizabeth Lambourn, 'Khutba and Muslim networks in the Indian Ocean (Part II) - Timurid and Ottoman engagements', in The growth of non-Western cities: primary and secondary urban networking, c. 900-1900, ed. Kenneth R. Hall.  Lanham: Lexington, 2011, pp. 127-154.

Najeeb M. Saleeby. Studies in Moro history, law and religion. Beirut: United Publishers, 1973. [Facsimile reprint of the 1905 ed.]

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

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Malay 'eye candy': illuminated literary manuscripts

We previously alerted our readers to a landmark digitisation project aimed at opening up the British Library’s invaluable repository of Hebrew manuscripts (Opening up the Hebrew Manuscript Collection). Over a three-year period 1250 objects from this outstanding collection, comprising well over 3000 manuscripts, would be made freely available online. 

The project has been made possible by a £1.2 million lead grant from the Polonsky Foundation. This significant award has provided a springboard for attracting additional funding for this ground-breaking initiative.

Dr Leonard Polonsky, Chairman of the Polonsky Foundation said,

I am delighted that these important and beautiful treasures have been made more widely available for the public to enjoy. I look forward to seeing the entire collection online and freely accessible in the future.

The Golden Haggadah. Miriam and her maidens rejoicing (top right); distribution of haroset ('sweet meats') by the master of the house (top left); preparations for Passover (lower right and left)
BL MS Add. 27210, f. 15r

We are very pleased to announce the launch of the first 45 Hebrew manuscripts on the Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site.  The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh  features prominently within this small corpus of handwritten books.  Tanakh is an acronym based on the first letters of each of the sections that make up the Hebrew Bible, namely Torah (Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses), Neviyim (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings).  The Torah is considered the most sacred part of the Hebrew Bible, because, according to tradition, Moses wrote it at divine dictation.

The Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) with masoretic notation.
The London Codex BL MS Or. 4445, f. 57r

Among the released biblical treasures viewable on the Digitised manuscripts site is the London Codex (Or. 4445) one of the oldest surviving Hebrew Bibles.  This manuscript bears great similarities with the Aleppo Codex (930 AD) and the  Leningrad Codex (1008-1010 AD), held respectively in Jerusalem and St. Petersburg.

It  contains the masoretic notation compiled by Aaron Ben Asher, a tenth-century scholar from Tiberias, Palestine.  Ben Asher’s notation is considered to be the most authoritative masoretic version extant.  The Masorah is a body of rules of pronunciation, spelling, vocalization and intonation of the scriptural text, intended to preserve it and transmit it correctly.

The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), one of the earliest codes of religious and moral precepts. The London Codex BL MS Or. 4445, f. 61v

The London Codex was probably copied in Egypt or Palestine around the 10^th century. The more recent paper additions with Yemenite square script are from the 16th century. As its colophon is missing, the exact date and place of its creation are unknown. The scriptural text was penned in a neat oriental square script in three columns per page.  The masoretic notation was copied above, beneath and in between the textual columns.  The scribe’s name Nissi ben Daniel, who apparently was also the punctuator, is embedded in the masoretic rubrics on folios 40r, 113v, 139r.  The manuscript was acquired by the British Museum in 1891 from a private collector.

Page with masoretic notation containing Nissi ben Daniel’s  name. The London Codex BL MS Or. 4445, f. 113v

With the Jewish Passover approaching, we are also thrilled to launch digitally the Golden Haggadah (Add. 27210), one of the finest surviving Haggdah manuscripts from medieval Spain and the British Library’s most famous Hebraic treasure.   Haggadah, which literally means ‘telling’, is the service book for Passover Eve recounting the story of the Israelites’ miraculous  liberation from slavery in Egypt. Created in Catalonia, probably in or near Barcelona around 1320 AD, this elegant manuscript written and illuminated on vellum, consists of three distinct parts: a series of small illustrations (miniatures) depicting biblical scenes, the Haggadah text, and religious poems for the Passover festival.

Moses (holding a staff)  leads the Israelites out of Egypt (top left); Pharaoh’s army in pursuit (lower right);  crossing of the Red Sea (lower left). The Golden Haggadah, BL MS Add. 27210, f. 14v

The sumptuous illuminations found in the preliminary section of the manuscript (fourteen full pages of miniatures) are set against gold-tooled backgrounds, and have earned the manuscript its name.  They were executed by two unnamed artists in the Gothic style common in Europe at the time.  Gothic style decorations also embellish the Hebrew text in the second part of the manuscript and include foliage scrollwork, illuminated words, zoomorphic letters and text illustrations of significant Passover symbols.

Zoomorphic lettering with dogs and rabbits spelling ve-yotsiany (and we were taken out [of Egypt]…). The Golden Haggadah, BL MS Add. 27210, f. 36v

The manuscript's earliest known owner was Joav Gallico, Rabbi in Mantua in 1602 and formerly a judge in Governolo.  The Golden Haggadah was a wedding gift to Eliah Rava who married Gallico’s daughter, Rosa, in Carpi, on 25^th October 1602, as recorded on the title page added on a blank page in the manuscript.

The Matsah (unleavened bread), one of the obligatory foods consumed during the Passover festival. The Golden Haggadah, BL MS Add. 27210, f. 44v

The last private owner of this gem was Joseph (Giuseppe) Almanzi (1801-1860), an Italian-Jewish poet, born in Padua, who was an avid collector of rare books and manuscripts.  We do not know when the Golden Haggadah entered  Almanzi’s manuscript collection, which was bought in 1864 by the British Museum, and now belongs to the British Library. 

The Maror (bitter herb) which symbolises the hard life endured by the Israelites while in Egyptian bondage. The Golden Haggadah, BL MS Add. 27210, f. 45v

Ilana Tahan, Lead Curator Hebrew and Christian Orient Studies