File BHH/1/70 - Letter from Josiah Forshall (1795 –1863), Secretary British Museum, to Brian Houghton Hodgson, 15 May 1845

Identity area

Reference code

GB 891 BHH-BHH/1-BHH/1/70

Title

Letter from Josiah Forshall (1795 –1863), Secretary British Museum, to Brian Houghton Hodgson, 15 May 1845

Date(s)

  • 15th May 1845 (Creation)

Level of description

File

Extent and medium

Context area

Name of creator

(1753-)

Administrative history

The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his royal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 added two other libraries to the Sir Hans Sloane collection, those of the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs.

Montagu House, c. 1715
The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests.[16] The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element, and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Content and structure area

Scope and content

Letter from Josiah Forshall (1795–1863), Secretary British Museum, to Brian Houghton Hodgson on behalf of the Trustees of the Museum to thank Hodgson for his valuable present of a manuscript in the language of Tibet, being the Yum, part of the Prajnāpāramitā. Handwritten, 1 side, dated 15 May 1845. Additional notes in the autograph book state that Hodgson had given copies of the Prajnāpāramitā to different institutions and persons including the Royal Asiatic Society, the Bodleian Library, College of Fort-William in Calcutta (3 copies), and Eugène Burnouf at the Société Asiatique.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Conditions governing reproduction

Language of material

  • English

Script of material

    Language and script notes

    Physical characteristics and technical requirements

    Finding aids

    Allied materials area

    Existence and location of originals

    Existence and location of copies

    Related units of description

    Related descriptions

    Notes area

    Alternative identifier(s)

    Access points

    Subject access points

    Place access points

    Name access points

    Genre access points

    Description control area

    Description identifier

    Institution identifier

    Rules and/or conventions used

    Status

    Level of detail

    Dates of creation revision deletion

    Language(s)

      Script(s)

        Sources

        Accession area