Blumhardt, Catalogue of the Hindi, Panjabi and Hindustani manuscripts in the Library of the British Museum. What is available in our Reading Rooms? Manuscripts: printed catalogues
Online PDF fileĪnother series of printed catalogues can be consulted in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room at the British Library (see below). Blumhardt, A supplementary catalogue of Hindustani books in the Library of the British Museum acquired during the years 1889-1908. Blumhardt, Catalogue of Hindustani printed books in the Library of the British Museum. The following catalogues detailing sections of the British Library’s Urdu manuscripts and early printed books can also be consulted on websites: Entries for our earlier printed book collections, including ‘Proscribed publications’, are currently being added to the South Asian Union Catalogue. Post-1984 Urdu publications are included in Explore the British Library. A unique Judaeo-Urdu manuscript, Or 1328.Pem nem: a 16th-century Urdu romance goes Add.16880.What is available online? Digitised Manuscripts
Within this, ‘Proscribed publications’ are of particular interest – as they contain more than 200 pamphlets, periodicals, handbills and posters banned by the British government in India during the crucial four decades leading up to Independence.
Historically, the Indian Press and Registration of Books Act of 1867 and the resulting selection of titles by both the India Office Library and the British Museum Department of Oriental Printed Books from the quarterly lists of Indian publications have led to a good coverage of works from the last quarter of the 19th century through to 1947. In content, they span the whole range of humanities and social sciences. Urdu printed books and periodicals range from the early output of European missionary presses to current research-level publications from India and Pakistan. The collection also offers a wide variety of archival material, such as autograph letters from prominent litterateurs, ‘ ulama and politicians, historical diaries, farmans, notifications, rules and petitions. Islam is, naturally, well-represented, as are Urdu grammar and lexicography, history, geography, politics, genealogy and biography (including the tazkirah).
Rich and varied in content, they are particularly strong in poetry, from exquisitely illuminated Dakhani masnavis to the divans of later famous Urdu poets and the tales and romances composed by the munshis of Fort William College in the early 19th century. The manuscript collections contains some of the earliest Urdu works extant today. The collection is available in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room. The collections provide a unique resource for those involved in South Asian research, particularly in the fields of history, politics, language, literature, Islam, law, education, anthropology, genealogy, geography, music, art and architecture. It contains more than 950 manuscripts, the earliest of which is dated 998 AH approximately 80,000 printed books, from the presses of the nineteenth century to the most significant publications of present-day India and Pakistan and 442 Newspapers and Periodicals. The British Library’s Urdu collection is unparalleled outside South Asia. Other South Asian languages written in Perso-Arabi script present in the collections are: Baluchi, Panjabi, Pashto and Siraiki. The major languages of the collections are as follows: The South Asian Islamic Languages Collections cover materials in all South Asian languages that are written in Perso-Arabic script.