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The Leyden Collection
I’d never really thought about it before, till reader E.V. Rao wondered the other day about the three best-known collections in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library tended by the Tamil Nadu Department of Archaeology in the University of
Madras’s campus. “The Mackenzie, Brown and Leyden Collections are always mentioned,” he writes, “but whereas the first two names are generally recalled, who or what was Leyden? Does it have anything to do with the Dutch city/university of the same name?” I quickly discovered that the Dutch city and 450-year-old university were spelt ‘Leiden’, but it took a while longer to discover the reference was to a Dr. John Leyden, the son of a shepherd, whose laird helped the boy become another of those Edinburgh University qualified doctors who on arrival in Madras in the 19th Century were also appointed as Naturalists. But this Leyden had much more to his c.v.
He arrived in Madras in 1803 as a 28-year-old who had also been ordained by the Church, had worked with Sir Walter Scott on his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, was a poet and linguist, and came with a commitment not to make a fortune here but to study the languages of Asia.
No sooner he arrived in Madras he started learning Tamil and in the four months he worked in the General Hospital became familiar with all the South Indian languages. Two who recognised his extraordinary talent and encouraged him were Francis Whyte Ellis and Colin Mackenzie, pioneering Indologists both. With that he began planning to ‘map’ all the languages of South and Southeast Asia with grammars and dictionaries.
But for all his dreams, he was sent out with Mackenize who was mapping the interior of South India. Even though he was ill most of the time, he prepared several reports on the languages, diseases and medicines, agriculture and geology of Mysore. His ill-health did not make him even think of returning to Britain; so obsessed was he with the project he planned, he went to Southeast Asia to recuperate and then accepted a posting in Calcutta in 1806. In Calcutta he did scores of papers and translations, most of which are in the British Library.
In the eight years he spent in India, he gained a reputation as an outstanding languages scholar. All his income he spent on munshis and buying Oriental manuscripts, determined to surpass William Jones one day. But he made few friends; annoyingly self-opinionated, irritatingly cantankerous, he put off people the most with his loud, screechy voice that he never seemed to stop using.
In 1811, Lord Minto, the Governor-General, had Leyden accompanying him on his journey to Southeast Asia to learn about the people there and their languages. The two of them together with Stamford Raffles founded British Singapore. Then they moved to Batavia in Java where Leyden was stricken with dengue and died in three days. He was only 36 and his work was far from finished.
On Denholm Green in his village in Scotland, Denholm, there stands tall a spire that’s a monument to Dr. John Leyden, scholar and poet.
In 1837, C.P. Brown discovered in the India Office Library in London several Tamil, Telugu and Kannada manuscripts midst many others that were called the Leyden Collection. Brown persuaded the authorities to move the manuscripts in the South Indian languages to Madras – where they in time found a home in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library.
S. MUTHIAH
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