Asiatic Researches; or, Transactions of the Society…
Asiatic Researches; or, Transactions of the Society, Instituted in Bengal, For Inquiring into the History and Antiquities, The Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia.

London: printed for J.Sewell; Vernor and Hood, and others, 1799-1812.

Eleven volumes, quarto, with a total of 132 plates (of which 24 are folding), some handcoloured; contemporary polished half calf with gilt spines.

'Much more than the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian world'.

A splendid set in a handsome and well-preserved contemporary binding: the first eleven years of this important publication, dating from a period when India was the fulcrum of British activity in the region. The journal covers everything from non-Western medicine to mystic poetry, and includes serious scholarly papers such as Sir William Jones On the Hindus – the first paper to demonstrate the unity of the Indo-European languages. Printing and the Mind of Man acknowledges the tremendous importance of Jones' paper, first published as a pamphlet in 1788 and reappearing in the first volume here (pp. 415-431): 'This slim paper… marks a turning point in the history of linguistics and signalled the birth of comparative philology.' In it Jones first revealed the similarity of Sanskrit, Greek, Gothic and Latin languages; and by so doing gave rise to the new discipline of Indo-European studies.

A splendid set in a handsome and well-preserved contemporary binding: the first eleven years of this important publication, dating from a period when India was the fulcrum of British activity in the region. The journal covers everything from non-Western medicine to mystic poetry, and includes serious scholarly papers such as Sir William Jones On the Hindus – the first paper to demonstrate the unity of the Indo-European languages. Printing and the Mind of Man acknowledges the tremendous importance of Jones' paper, first published as a pamphlet in 1788 and reappearing in the first volume here (pp. 415-431): 'This slim paper… marks a turning point in the history of linguistics and signalled the birth of comparative philology.' In it Jones first revealed the similarity of Sanskrit, Greek, Gothic and Latin languages; and by so doing gave rise to the new discipline of Indo-European studies.

The Asiatic Society was instituted in 1784 (originally as "The Asiatick Society"), comprising members of the East India Company stationed in Bengal and further afield alongside merchants, scholars and literati living in Britain with a deep interest in the history and cultures of Asia. The geographical scope of the studies is significant, from Arabia to Indonesia, encompassing the Indian subcontinent, China, Nepal and Tibet.

The diversity of articles is remarkable, ranging from ancient history and languages through to natural history, ethnology and astronomy. Interestingly, a number of articles concern the peoples and trading products of South-East Asia including articles on the Andaman Islands and the ethnology of the Nassau Islands off Sumatra. Entries on inter-island trade and natural commodities include a detailed article of ten pages on the varieties of pepper cultivated in Prince of Wales Island (present day Penang in Malaysia).

Other antiquarian articles of enduring interest include an examination of an Arabic manuscript of Aristotle, reference to Egypt and the flooding of the Nile in ancient Hindu literature and the Indian cosmology of ecliptic time. Such historical material is published alongside geographical and scientific papers such as the trigonometric survey of India by William Lambton and William Petrie (including a fine engraved map of the triangulation method).

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The effect of the society's various publications and undertakings was profound, doing much to acquaint its European readership with the principles and practice of both Hinduism and Buddhism and contributing generally to the growing interest in the comparative study of civilisations. As Michael Palencia-Roth has noted, 'The founding of the Asiatick Society reflected – and then influenced – a profound change in humankind's view of itself. This change had to do with the realization that the study of human society and its cultural and political manifestations had to encompass much more than the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian world, and that the meaning of human history could not be made to depend primarily on a Judaeo-Christian conception of the world and of human destiny' ("The Presidential Addresses of Sir William Jones", online resource).

See Printing and the Mind of Man, 235.

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