Description
of Collection
Content description
The Hodgson Collection contains manuscripts collected by Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800-94), the Government of India's Assistant Resident, and later Resident, in Nepal 1820-44, who lived privately at Darjeeling c1845-58. It comprises manuscripts in English, Sanskrit, Nepali, Hindi, Tibetan, Lepcha, Limbu, Persian, Urdu, and other oriental languages, relating primarily to Nepal, and also to Tibet and elsewhere in the Himalaya. There are documents of all kinds including king lists; chronicles; lists of landholdings and taxes; notes on the legal system; descriptions of castes, customs, rituals and festivals; route descriptions. Other material from the Hodgson Collection can be found in the South Asian Languages and Prints, Drawings and Photographs sections of Asia Pacific and Africa Collections.
History and development
The Collection was donated by Hodgson to the India Office Library in 1864. According to F W Thomas, who compiled a brief handlist of the collection: 'during the period 1864-1919 the papers underwent no searching examination, although on one or two occasions some of the more accessible were consulted. In the course of the various changes through which the Library passed the large bundles were dispersed, and there was a certain admixture of papers of other provenance.' The papers were bound up and Thomas compiled his handlist between 1919 and 1927.
Strengths
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General arrangement and access regulations
The Hodgson Collection, apart from the rolls, has been bound into volumes according to size of manuscript. The handlist is not in volume number order but, according to F W Thomas, has been arranged as far as possible according to the original parcels and sub-parcels in which the collection was received.
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Subjects of the
Collection
Regions of AsiaSouth Asia. CountriesNepal. Languages of materialEnglish, Hindi, Nepali, Newari, Persian, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Urdu. SubjectsAgriculture, Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, Language, Law, Literature, Religion. |
