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Abstract

Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) was the founding father of the British Museum and its Library, which later became the British Library. Sloane’s vast collections of natural history specimens, coins, medals, ethnographic items, and books included four thousand manuscripts, twelve of which were from Southeast Asia. These twelve Southeast Asian manuscripts, including eight from the Indonesian archipelago, are described in detail here. Although Sloane is not known to have had personal connections with Southeast Asia or any particular interest in the region, this small collection nonetheless encompasses an exceptionally wide range of the languages, scripts, writing supports and books formats found in the region, manifest in some of the earliest manuscripts known in certain genres.

References

Arps, Bernard and Willem van der Molen (eds). 1994. Serat Lokapala kawi: an eighteenth-century manuscript of the Old Javanese Arjunawijaya by Mpu Tantular; A facsimile edition of manuscript Cod.Or. 2048 in the Library of Leiden University. Leiden: Indonesian Linguistics Development Project (ILDEP) in co-operation with Legatum Warnerianum in the Library of Leiden University. [Manuscripta Indonesica 3.]

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 1997. “A 17th-century Malay miscellany; Two new discoveries in the British Library”, in: Tradisi penulisan manuskrip Melayu, pp. 71-86. Kuala Lumpur: Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia.

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 2015. “Dates on Malay seals; A study of Arabic numerals from Southeast Asia”, Jurnal Filologi Melayu 22: 89-114.

Herbert, Patricia. 1989. “The making of a collection; Burmese manuscripts in the British Library”, The British Library Journal 15(1): 59-70.

Hunt, Arnold. 2012. “Sloane as a collector of manuscripts”, in: A. Walker, A. MacGregor, and M. Hunter (eds), From books to bezoars; Sir Hans Sloane and his collections, pp. 190-207. London: The British Library.

Khazeni, Arash. 2018. “Merchants to the Golden City; The Persian Farmān of King Chandrawizaya Rājā and the elephant and ivory trade in the Indian Ocean, a view from 1728”, Iranian Studies 51(6): 933-945.

Meij, Dick van der. 2017. Indonesian manuscripts from the islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok. Leiden: Brill.

Mohamad Jajuli Rahman. 1986. The Undang-Undang; A mid-eighteenth century Malay law text (BL Sloane MS 2393); Transcription and translation. Canterbury: University of Kent, Centre of South-East Asian studies.

Ricklefs, M.C. and P. Voorhoeve. 1977. Indonesian manuscripts in Great Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rieu, Charles. 1879. Catalogue of the Persian manuscripts in the British Museum. Vol. 1. London: Longmans.

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Yahya, Ismail, Moh. Abdul Kholiq Hasan, and Farkhan. 2018. Penerjemahan manuskrip Masa’il at-ta’lim ke dalam aksara pegon pada abad ke-17 M. Sukoharjo: IAIN Surakarta.

Blog posts

All published on the British Library’s Asian and African studies blog < https:// britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/index.html>:

Chonchirdsin, Sud. 2018. “A Vietnamese Lord’s letter to the East India Company”, 15-10- 2018.

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 2013. “Malay manuscripts in the Sloane collection”, 4-11-2013.

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 2018a. “Two Christian manuscripts in Malay”, 1-4-2018.

Gallop, Annabel Teh. 2018b. “Javanese manuscripts in the Sloane collection”, 19-11-2018.

Gallop, Annabel Teh, San San May, Jana Igunma, and Sud Chonchirdsin. 2018. “A new display of Southeast Asian manuscripts from the Sloane collection”, 12-9-2018.

Sudarma, Ida Bagus Komang, Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan, and Arlo Griffiths. 2018. “Sir Hans Sloane’s Old Javanese manuscript, Sloane 3480”, 20-6-2018.

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