Interpreting the History of the Paramāras

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-28
Author(s):  
ARVIND K. SINGH
Keyword(s):  
Central India ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
History Of ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

The opening essay in this special issue by Daud Ali surveys the historiography of the medieval and touches on some of the key problems of interpretation and periodisation in Indian history. However, Ali's paper does not address the Paramāras of central India and their part in building a strong kingdom in the heart of the country for several centuries. Because an introduction to the dynasty's history is essential for situating the articles that follow, this paper will survey the leading role played by the Paramāras in the history of India over the four hundred years of their political existence. This paper also provides an opportunity to contextualise the three Royal Asiatic Society copper-plates of the Paramāra dynasty now kept in the British Museum; they are illustrated in the pages that follow (Figs 1–3).

scholarly journals The Siege of Madras in 1746 and the action of La Bourdonnais

1908 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 189-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. W. Forrest
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Responsibility ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Satisfactory Manner ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

When I was invited to read a paper on Indian history at a meeting of the Royal Historical Society I felt not only honoured by the request, but also gratified to learn that the Society intended to bring within its scope the encouragement of the study of the history of our Indian Empire, an empire whose progress and growth is a wondrous fact in the history of the world. The history of the Hindu kingdoms and the history of the government of the Mahomedans should be the special province of the Royal Asiatic Society, for no Englishman can deal with them in a satisfactory manner without a knowledge of the classical languages of the East. He must study and compare the original historians of India. The systematic study of the history of British dominion in India must be the most effectual agency in removing that ignorance (so strange and so discreditable) which prevails among all classes in England regarding the history of our Indian Empire. The responsibility for a just, impartial and stable government of India has been committed for good or evil into the hands of Parliament, and through Parliament to the electoral body of Great Britain; but the electoral body must fail to discharge that great responsibility if the reading multitude remain ignorant of the history of English government in India. It is also the duty and the interest of England that the young men who are sent from our universities to be the main instruments of administering the government of our Indian Empire in all its extensive and complicated branches should be trained to pursue the study of history in a scientific spirit, so that they may be able to apply scientific methods of inquiry to an examination in detail of the development of our administration in India. Many years spent in examining the musty documents in the Indian archives has brought home to me the value of the light which history may shed on practical problems. In India there is no problem which is old, there is no problem which is new. Measures which were supposed to be new would never have been passed if they had been studied by the dry light of history. In the Record Office under his charge the Indian civilian will generally find some material which will reward the labour of research.

scholarly journals An Illustrated Shiʿi Pilgrimage Scroll in the Collections of the Royal Asiatic Society

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
ULRICH MARZOLPH ◽  
MATHILDE RENAULD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
Material Condition ◽  
Visual Dimension ◽  
History Of ◽  
Initial Survey ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

Abstract The collections of the Royal Asiatic Society hold an illustrated pilgrimage scroll apparently dating from the first half of the nineteenth century. The scroll's hand painted images relate to the journey that a pious Shiʿi Muslim would have undertaken after the performance of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Its visual narrative continues, first to Medina and then to the Shiʿi sanctuaries in present-day Iraq, concluding in the Iranian city of Mashhad at the sanctuary of the eighth imam of the Twelver-Shiʿi creed, imam Riḍā (d. 818). The scroll was likely prepared in the early nineteenth century and acquired by the Royal Asiatic Society from its unknown previous owner sometime after 1857. In terms of chronology the pilgrimage scroll fits neatly into the period between the Niebuhr scroll, bought in Karbala in 1765, and a lithographed item most likely dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century, both of which depict a corresponding journey. The present essay's initial survey of the scroll's visual dimension, by Ulrich Marzolph, adds hitherto unknown details to the history of similar objects. The concluding report, by Mathilde Renauld, sheds light on the scroll's material condition and the difficulties encountered during the object's conservation and their solution.

scholarly journals Art. XIV.—History of Tennasserim

1835 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 248-275
Author(s):  
James Low
Keyword(s):  
Asiatic Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

The following abstract is taken from Captain Low's history of the provinces wrested from the Burmese during the late war, which, through his friend in this country, was presented to the Royal Asiatic Society. Several portions of it have already been read at the general meetings of the society, and it is intended to continue to give abstracts from it in the successive numbers of this journal, in the confident hope that the British public will speedily call for the entire publication of a work containing the most authentic information respecting a country, our relations with which are daily increasing in value and importance.

Art. XVIII.—The Northern Frontagers of China. Part VI. Hia or Tangut

1883 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-482
Author(s):  
H. H. Howorth
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Early History ◽  
Eastern Asia ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
Abundant Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

In tracing out the very crooked story of the history of Central and Eastern Asia, in which we have to deal with a succession of empires founded by a number of races, which have necessarily overrun its more desirable areas, there is only one method of inquiry which seems to be at once safe and fertile. This is to commence with the latest revolutions. To gradually unravel the tangle into which the story has been twisted, by first understanding the latest changes, about which we have abundant evidence, and then to work back to that earlier and more obscure period which must always have a great interest and romance for those who speculate on the origin and early history of our race. This is the method I have ventured to adopt in the series of papers on the Northern Frontagers of China, which I have been permitted, by the favour of the Royal Asiatic Society, to commence in the pages of its Journal, and in which I hope, if allowed, to pass in review the different races who have dominated over Central Asia and China from the earliest times.

Art. XVII.—Dr. Bhagvânlâl Indrâjî's Interpretation of the Mathurâ Lion Pillar Inscriptions

1894 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-540
Author(s):  
G. Bühler
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

A lingering illness, ending with a premature death, prevented the late Dr. Bhagvânlâl Indrâjî from completing. his article on one of his most important discoveries, the inscriptions on the Mathurâ Lion Pillar. What he had written, or rather dictated to his assistant—a transcript as well as Sanskrit and English translations, together with some notes—was sent after his death to England, with the sculpture (now in the British Museum), and made over for publication to the Royal Asiatic Society. With the permission of the Society's Council, I have undertaken to edit these materials, and thus for the last time to perform a task which I have performed more than once for my lamented friend's papers during his lifetime. In doing this I have compared Dr. Bhagvânlâl's transcript first with the originals on the stone, and afterwards again with an excellent paper impression, presented to me by Dr. James Burgess in 1889. The collation has made necessary some alterations in the transcript and in the translation, among which the more important ones have been pointed out in the notes. But I may confidently assert that all really essential points have been fully settled and explained by Dr. Bhagvânlâl, whose great acumen and scholarship are as conspicuous in his interpretation of these inscriptions as in his other epigraphic publications. For convenience's sake I have prefixed an introduction, summarizing the chief results deducible from the inscriptions.

scholarly journals Art. II.—Translation of some Assyrian Inscriptions: No. III.—The Inscription of Bellino

1861 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 76-105
Author(s):  
H. Fox Talbot
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

In the year 1856 I printed, not for publication but for private distribution, a few pages entitled “Assyrian Texts Translated,” of which I did myself the honour to present a copy to the Royal Asiatic Society. It commenced by a translation of Bellino's, Cylinder, as represented at plate 63 of the first volume of inscriptions published by the British Museum, in several parts of which, however, the cuneiform signs are very incorrectly and confusedly represented. Most of these imperfect parts I omitted, though of some I attempted a translation.

Art. XIV.—Ten Ancient Inscriptions on Stone and Copper found on the Western side of India, and translated by William Henry Wathen, Esq. &C. &C. Secretary to Government, Bombay

1835 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 378-399
Keyword(s):  
Ancient India ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Side ◽  
The Many ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

The object in collecting and translating the many inscriptions to be met with in India, is, as Mr. Wathen very justly observes in his letter to the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, to elucidate the history of India previous to the Muhammedan conquest. Of that history, but little is yet known: that little to the few only who have devoted the greater part of their lives to this research, and each of those few possessing perhaps a part only of that information which, if combined and moulded into a whole, might, at no distant day, supply this desideratum in our knowledge of the East, without which no accurate notion can be formed of the true character of ancient India, as to its modes of government, laws, and usages

X. Sennacherib's Campaigns on the North-West and his Work at Nineveh

1910 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-411
Author(s):  
T. G. Pinches
Keyword(s):  
Persian Gulf ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
North West ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
The North ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

THE British Museum having been fortunate enough to acquire a new historical document from Assyria of considerable importance, it has been thought that (not withstanding that an excellent translation and commentary upon it, from the pen of the copyist of the text, Mr. L. W. King, of the British Museum, has been published) a few notes concerning it would not be without interest to the readers of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and more particularly those whose studies deal with the pre-Christian Semitic East, especially the tract lying north-west of the Persian Gulf.

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