The Asiatic Society
| The Asiatic Society of Bengal | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Volunteer Association |
| founding | January 15, 1784 |
| founder | William Jones |
| Seat | Calcutta |
| purpose | Promotion of Oriental Studies |
| Chair | Biswanath Banerji |
| Managing directors | Mihir Kumar Chakrabarti |
| Website | https://www.asiaticsocietykolkata.org/ |
The Asiatic Society was founded in 1784 as a scientific society with the aim of promoting Oriental Studies by a number of members of the British elite in the city of Calcutta .
Like other scientific societies, especially the model of the Royal Society in London, The Asiatic Society held general meetings at which leading orientalists and naturalists presented the results of their work. These were then published in the company's magazines. The Asiatic Society has issued several thousand publications during its history, including the Bibliotheca Indica series .
The Asiatic Society has been closely associated with government institutions or their employees since it was founded, initially with the British colonial administration and, since Indian independence, with the governments of India and the state of West Bengal . In 1984, The Asiatic Society was declared an "institution of national importance" by a resolution of the Indian Parliament. Since then, their expenses have been met from the state budget.
In the course of its history, numerous important institutions in India have emerged from the Asiatic Society , including the Indian Museum as the oldest museum in the country and, through the museum, the Zoological Survey of India .
history
In January 1784, William Jones , linguist, indologist and judge of the Bengal Presidency's Supreme Court , sent a circular to some British residents of Calcutta proposing the establishment of a Society for Oriental Studies. His invitation was followed by thirty interested parties who met on January 15, 1784 in a courtroom of the Supreme Court at Fort William in Calcutta and decided to found the Asiatick Society . The inaugural meeting was chaired by Robert Chambers , the presiding judge of the Supreme Court. Other founding members included John Hyde , John Carnac , Henry Vanisttart , John Shore, 1st Baron Teignmouth , Charles Wilkins , Francis Gladwin, and Jonathan Duncan . During the meeting, Jones presented the company's goals. The company's memorandum of articles that he had prepared stated:
"The bounds of investigations will be the geographical limits of Asia, and within these limits its inquiries will be extended to whatever is performed by man or produced by nature."
"The limits of our research will be the geographical limits of Asia, and within those limits it will extend to everything that has been created by humans or nature."
The Asiatic Society's first patron was Warren Hastings , the first Governor General of the Bengal Presidency, who had previously declined a request to take over the Asiatic Society's presidency . The first president was John Williams, who held that office for ten years until his death. Other prominent early members were Charles Wilkins and the Indologist Alexander Hamilton .
Based on the tradition of the Royal Society in London, but with a focus on Asian topics, lectures were given during the meetings by prominent representatives of orientalist research, which were later also published in the journals of the Asiatic Society . Speakers in the early years were William Jones, Henry Thomas Colebrooke , Horace Hayman Wilson, William Carey and James Prinsep . They translated important scripts from Sanskrit and Persian, developed transliteration systems and deciphered historical inscriptions.
Initially, the Society's meetings were held in a Supreme Court courtroom . The members had to pay two mohur for each quarter and new members were elected from the previous ones. On September 29, 1796, the company decided to move into its own building. A plot of land on the corner of Park Street and Chowringhee Road was selected, which was transferred to the company on May 15, 1805 by the government. The first general meeting in the new two-story building of the society took place on February 3rd, 1808.
In 1959 the foundation stone for a new building financed by the governments of India and West Bengal was laid on the old property. The building was inaugurated in 1965 by the Indian President S. Radhakrishnan .
At the time of its establishment, the society was called the Asiatick Society . In 1825 the antique "k" was discarded and the society was first called The Asiatic Society. In 1832 the name was changed to The Asiatic Society of Bengal and from 1936 the society was called The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. It received its current name on July 1, 1951.
Relationship to the Indian population
The Asiatic Society has been closely associated with the government throughout its history. It was founded by British colonial officials, judges and senior employees of the British East India Company . Again and again, governors-general appeared as presidents of the society and it was supported by the state with financial grants, property transfers and important collections.
The motivation of the members of the Asiatic Society was not uniform. Initially, The Asiatic Sociaty was a learned society, and many of its members were driven by genuine research interests. On the other hand, for almost half a century only representatives of the British colonial power were members of society who contributed their professional interests. William Jones had been sent to Calcutta as a judge just months before the Asiatic Society was founded. He already admitted that his study of classical Hindu law should be of use to him in his work.
On the initiative of the Indologist Horace Hayman Wilson , a number of Indians were elected to society for the first time in 1829. Among them was Dwarkanath Tagore . In 1885, Rajendralal Mitra became the first Indian President of the Society. That did not change the fact that The Asiatic Society, like comparable societies in other parts of the colonial empire, was a British-Indian institution. But her research and publications on the millennia-old Indian cultures helped to create an awareness of their own culture and a national consciousness in the Indian elite.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi also took part in the celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the company in 1984, and on this occasion she promised a one-off state grant of 50 million rupees . In the same year, The Asiatic Society was declared an "institution of national importance" by a resolution of the Indian parliament. Since then, their expenses have been met from the state budget. Several of the company's board positions are held by ministerial officials from India or the state of West Bengal.
Library
One of the most important early activities of the Asiatic Society was the collection of ancient Indian manuscripts in Sanskrit and other Indian languages. Today the library has a rich collection of manuscripts in 26 languages. The library's oldest printed book is Juli Firmicis Astronomicorum Libri from 1499. Its holdings include a large number of books printed in India from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The library today has the most important collection of literature on ancient and colonial India in Asia.
The library currently has around 117,000 books and 79,000 volumes of journals in almost all world languages. In addition, she owns 293 cards, microfiches of 48,000 works, 387,000 pages on microfilm, 182 paintings, 2,500 pamphlets and 2,150 photographs.
The library was expanded in the first few years by donations from members of the Asiatic Society , and in March 1784 the library received seven Persian manuscripts from Henri Richardson. The orientalist William Marsden donated his book History of Island of Sumatra , published in 1783, in November of the founding year . The portrait and landscape painter Robert Home , the first employee of the library from 1804, donated his small but valuable collection of works of art.
On February 3, 1808, at the opening of the company's new building, the library was given the precious collection of Tipu Sultan's palace library, which had been looted after the siege of Seringapatam in 1799 . Particularly noteworthy are an illustrated manuscript of the Koran , a manuscript of the Golestan of Saadi and a manuscript of the Padshahnama with the signature of the Mughal ruler Shah Jahan .
In December 1822, the library was given the private library with manuscripts and drawings from the estate of Colin Mackenzie , who died the previous year, and whose holdings mainly dealt with South India. In the middle of the 19th century, the botanical library of Nathaniel Wallich and, on the part of the government, the complete orientalist specialist library of Fort William College were important additions. In the 20th century, the library received important legacies, such as the private libraries of the politician and social reformer Jnananjan Niyogi and the anthropologist Nirmal Kumar Bose , both of whom were active in the independence movement.
The Asiatic Society has been publishing the Bibliotheca Indica series since 1849 . It encompasses a broad spectrum of publications on Oriental Studies, text editions of rare or never-before-printed ancient writings, their English translations, grammars, dictionaries, bibliographies and current studies.
museum
When the Indian Museum opened in 1814, The Asiatic Society donated most of their valuable collections to him. The Asiatic Society still has its own museum, which includes one of Ashoka's edicts from the third century BC. Is located. Other items in the collection are inscriptions on copper plates, coins, sculptures, manuscripts and archive materials. Some important European works of art are also in the inventory, including works by Joshua Reynolds , Guido Cagnacci , Thomas Daniell and Peter Paul Rubens .
Publications
The Asiatic Society published its first magazine just a few years after it was founded. Asiatick Researches was published in twenty volumes from 1788 to 1839. From 1829 to 1831, the short-lived Gleanings in science were published from among the membership . The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal reappeared from 1832 as a publication of the Asiatic Society. In 1869 the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society were added to him . Both journals were combined in 1904 to form the Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society . Since 1953 the journal has been called the Journal of the Asiatic Society . Between 1905 and 1933 the memoirs appeared with specialist articles on archeology, geology, population statistics and treatises on law and taxes.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, The Asiatic Society repeatedly published catalogs of their collections. It is planned to publish a comprehensive catalog of the books, manuscripts, tablets, coins, drawings and antiques in the library and museum.
Forerunners of other institutions
The Asiatic Soicety was the forerunner of a number of major Indian institutions. As early as 1814 she gave the impetus to found the Indian Museum in Calcutta and handed over a large part of its own collections to the new foundation. The Indian Museum's collections were curated by the Asiatic Society for more than 50 years before coming under the government.
Indirectly, through the establishment of the Indian Museum, The Asiatic Society laid the foundation for organizations such as the Botanical Survey of India , the Zoological Survey of India, and the Anthropological Survey of India .
literature
- Ramakanta Chakrabarty: Time past and time present. Two hundred and twenty-five years of the Asian Society. Kolkata: The Asiatic Society 2008.
- OP Kejariwal: The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India's Past. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press 1999, ISBN 0-19-565089-1 .
- OP Kejariwal: Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay. A comprehensive index, 1841 - 2001. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library & Asiatic Society of Mumbai 2004, ISBN 81-87614-23-4 .
- John Mathew: Edward Blyth, John M'Clelland, the curatorship of the Asiatic Society's collections and the origins of the Calcutta journal of natural history. In: Archives of natural history 2015, Volume 42, No. 2, pp. 265-278, doi : 10.3366 / anh.2015.0311 .
- SK Mitra: The Asiatic Society. Founded January 15, 1784. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society 1974.
- DR SarDesai: Asian Societies of Bengal and Bombay. In: Stanley Wolpert (Ed.): Encyclopedia of India, Volume 1, A – D. Detroit et al: Thomson-Gale 2006, pp. 65–68, ISBN 0-684-31350-2 (single volume), ISBN 0-684-31349-9 (complete work, 4 volumes).
Web links
- Homepage (English)
- Asiatic Researches in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (English)
- Gleanings in science in the Biodiversity Heritage Library
- Journal of the Asiatic Society in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (English)
- Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (English)
- Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b About us , Asiatic Society website , accessed November 28, 2017.
- ↑ Members of the Asiatick Society, from 15 January 1784 to 15 January 1789. In: Asiatick Researches 1788, Volume 1, p v-vii, digitized .
- ↑ correspondence between The Asiatick Society, represented by 13 founding members, and Governor-General William Hastings, 22 and 30 January 1784. In: Asiatick Researches 1788, Volume 1, p v-vii, digitized .
- ^ A b John Mathew: Edward Blyth, John M'Clelland , p. 265.
- ↑ a b c d D. R. SarDesai: Asiatic Societies of Bengal and Bombay, p. 66.
- ↑ a b c d e D. R. SarDesai: Asiatic Societies of Bengal and Bombay, p. 67.
- ↑ DR Sardesai: Asiatic Societies of Bengal and Bombay, pp 65-66.
- ^ John Mathew: Edward Blyth, John M'Clelland , p. 266.
- ^ John Mathew: Edward Blyth, John M'Clelland , p. 276, footnote 1.