The archives in the India office records

Abstract

Since there may be some confusion about the title of this paper, I want to begin with some definitions. Primarily I want to make clear the distinction between archives and manuscripts and I shall begin with manuscripts. A manuscript is, broadly speaking, any piece of paper or other material with hand-writing on it. In current usage, however, the word has an even wider coverage. One can distinguish, for instance, a literary manuscript (which could be in typescript), a single document (say a personal copy of a birth certificate--a printed form filled in in manuscript), a collectorts collection of manuscripts of all kinds such as Sir Thomas Phillipps accumulated, or an archival collection, national, local, semi-official or private, which may contain handwritten, typescript or printed materials, computer tapes, and all kinds of connected objects. In the more specific sense--and this is where I want to emphasize the distinction between manuscripts and archives-manuscripts are individual items, usually texts of a literary or religious nature, which may be collected in isolation or perhaps by subject or by language. Whether they are collected one by one or in small groups, each item is an end in itself to be catalogued separately, rather like printed books. Although, of course, if a group of manuscripts of this kind comes from one source they are normally maintained as a collection though catalogued individually. Thus, in general--and I exclude the Political Papers--the British Library's manuscripts in both the Department of Manuscripts and the Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books Department are manuscripts in the specific sense, though the Department of Manuscripts also holds many individual documents and smaller or larger groups of them. Most of the materials to be found in the India Office Library's Oriental Section are manuscripts in the specific sense. Archives, on the other hand, are the papers which accumulate in any on-going institution or indeed in the hands of private families. They grow out of the activities of the institution or the family so that they become organic collections of papers which remain in the custody of the body which created them until they are passed over to an accredited archivist. If they are broken up and dispersed or wrongly arranged, their value as sources for the study of the institution or family concerned is damaged. The institution may be central government or a department of central government, local government, a church, a business, a society or any other corporate group. The family may be landowners with a long history going back to the Middle Ages or one which sent its sons to the East. Such collections are not only the primary source for studies of the parent institution or family, but are also materials which, when used within the context of the whole archive, become a significant and trustworthy source for an infinite range of subjects undreamt of at the time of their creation. Such archival collections may comprise correspondence, minute books, minuting of the type to be found on modern files, account books, charters and deeds, agreements, diaries and so on. I would like now to try to indicate how these definitions apply to