South Asian Studies: Primary Sources
Colonial Indian History
- Empire Online This link opens in a new windowA broad range of original documents from Western colonial empires; includes a lot of information on South Asia.
- India, Raj and Empire This link opens in a new windowOriginal manuscript material from the National Library of Scotland, including diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original documents produced in south Asia from 1615-1947.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (1701-1800 - ECCO) This link opens in a new windowBased on The English Short Title Catalogue, this collection includes the holdings of the British Library as well as those from more than 1,500 university, private, and public libraries worldwide. It contains a corpus of books, pamphlets, and broadsides in all subjects from 1701-1800.
- Early English Books Online-- Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) This link opens in a new windowSearchable and downloadable handmade transcriptions of thousands of texts from the Early English Books Online database.
- Times Digital Archive (London), 1785-2019 This link opens in a new window"This historical newspaper archive allows researchers an unparalleled opportunity to search and view the best-known and most cited newspaper in the world online in its original published context (Gale)." Fondren owns access to the Times Digital Archive 1785-1986, 1987-2013 and 2015-2019. Current issues of The Times Digital Archive are available from Nexis Uni and Newspaper Source under JN "Times, The (United Kingdom)" and are also searchable in Gale NewsVault.
- Guardian (the) and The Observer - Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowImages and full-text articles of the British newspaper The Guardian (with coverage from 1821-2003) and its sister paper The Observer (with coverage from 1791-2003).
- U.K. Parliamentary Papers This link opens in a new windowThe U.K. Parliamentary Papers consists of the following modules:
● House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 18th Century, 19th Century and 20th Century (1688-2004)
● House of Lords Parliamentary Papers (1800-1910)
● Hansard (1803-2005)
● Eighteenth Century Parliamentary Papers Collection, which is comprised of: 1) Harper Collection of Private Bills (1695-1814); 2) House of Commons Sessional Papers (1715-1800); 3) House of Lords Sessional Papers (1714-1805); 4) Journals of the House of Commons (1688-1834); 5) Journals of the House of Lords (1688-1834); 6) Local and Personal Acts (1797-1834); and 7) Parliamentary Register (1780-1796). - House of Commons Parliamentary Papers via C19 This link opens in a new windowBibliographic information for parliamentary records and papers from the British House of Commons from the 1800s and early 1900s.
- British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new windowSearchable text and images from 18th-20th century regional and local British newspapers, collected by the British Library.
- Digital Colonial DocumentsA collection of rare seminal documents which were influential in the formation of the notions of nation, state and culture in India during the colonial period.
- East India Company, 1599-1947 This link opens in a new windowFiles from the India Office Records from the British Library, London. Includes royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types that cover the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599-1947.
- South Asia Digital CollectionThe South Asian Digital Collection features selected books, serials, and manuscripts related to the present-day countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. All items in this digital collection are freely accessible online. This digital collection includes items in South Asian languages (e.g., Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu) as well as items relevant to South Asia in English, French, German, and other languages. Researchers will find materials about colonialism in South Asia; vernacular literature; religion and philosophy; grammar and linguistics; the rebellion of 1857; American and European accounts of travel in colonial India; and many other subjects in the broad field of South Asian studies.
Archival Sources
Online Text and Image Collections
- Digital South Asia Library
A project of the Center for Research Libraries, this Website provides access to information about contemporary and historical South Asia – including full-text documents, statistical data, electronic images, cartographic representations, and pedagogical resources for language instruction.
- Savifa
An electronic platform for publishing and archiving academic literature in the field of South Asian studies. Contains a large collection of periodicals in the vernacular languages of India.
- Sacred Texts
Link to dozens of freely available online editions of sacred texts from the Eastern and Western religions, including (but not limited to) Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Taoism.
- The Tibetan and Himalayan Library
Information relating to the Tibetan plateau and southern Himalayan regions.
- ARTstorARTstor is a rich digital library that offers coherent collections of art images and descriptive information as well as the software tools to enable active use of the collections. It includes approximately 300,000 images covering art, architecture and archeology.
- South Asia Open Archives InitiativeSouth Asia Open Archives is a free open-access resource for research and teaching - a rich and growing curated collection of key historical and contemporary sources in arts, humanities and social sciences, from and about South Asia.
- South Asian Diaspora Arts Archive"SADAA conserves, digitises, shares, and celebrates the work of first generation British South Asian artists, post-partition."
Web Address: library.rice.edu | Physical Address: 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005 | Mailing Address: MS-44, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, Texas 77251-1892 | Phone: 713-348-5698 | © 2014 Rice University