Indian Interpreters in the Making of Colonial Historiography: New Light on Mark Wilks’s Historical Sketches of the South of India (1810–1817)

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Abstract A forgotten archive at Oxford, the working library of Mark Wilks (1759–1831), sometime Resident of Madras who wrote the influential Historical Sketches of the South of India (1810), offers evidence of Anglo-Indian collaboration in the early colonial period following the 1799 defeat of Tipu Sultan. Examining new manuscript evidence, this article shows how Wilks, a friend of Colin Mackenzie, the surveyor of Mysore, used texts from the vast Mackenzie Collection to compose his history, abstracting selected translations for his own library. Wilks had the help of Mackenzie’s assistants, in particular Kavali Venkata Lakshmayya. Lakshmayya (and others) provided Wilks with translations of land grants and genealogical narratives, both of which were used to establish historical chronology. Because the British saw themselves as restorers of ancient Indian practices, chronology was as important for public policy as for historiography. Working with Wilks, Lakshmayya compiled a large manuscript folio that was at once a table to convert dates among western, Islamic, and Indian calendars, and a historical abstract giving a timeline of key events. This and other manuscripts show Wilks’s use of the Mackenzie Collection beyond only inscriptions. Historical chronology was established through a mix of sources: inscriptions, narrative accounts, and published works. Moreover, Wilks incorporated narratives written by native interpreters into Historical Sketches. Indian history was the result of Anglo-Indian collaboration. Native interpreters contributed significant intellectual labour, and their historiographical work laid the foundation for the writing of the early history of South India.