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- Title
Herbaria as manuscripts: Philology, ethnobotany, and the textual–visual mesh of early modern botany.
- Authors
Dietz, Bettina
- Abstract
While interest in early modern herbaria has so far mainly concentrated on the dried plants stored in them, this paper addresses another of their qualities – their role as manuscripts. In the 1670s, the German botanist Paul Hermann (1646–95) spent several years in Ceylon (today Sri Lanka) as a medical officer in the service of the Dutch East India Company. During his stay he put together four herbaria, two of which contain a wealth of handwritten notes by himself and several later owners. First, it will be shown that these notes provide information on the linguistic skills and interests of those who collected plants in an overseas trading settlement. Hermann's botanical practice demanded and, at the same time, generated knowledge of Sinhalese (an Indo-Aryan language that is spoken by the largest ethnic group on the island) and its script. In his herbarium, observations on the semantics, morphology, and pronunciation of Sinhalese are inextricably intertwined with those of botanical nature. Second, on the basis of these voluminous notes, the character of early modern herbaria as manuscripts will be highlighted. And third, Hermann's herbaria will be integrated into an investigation of scribal practices and publication strategies of eighteenth-century botany. Along with field notes, letters, manuscripts, illustrations, and printed books, herbaria were knots in the textual–visual mesh of early modern botany.
- Subjects
SRI Lanka; HERBARIA; BOTANY; ETHNOBOTANY; NEDERLANDSCHE Oost-Indische Cie.; ARCHIPELAGOES; PHILOLOGY; VISUAL culture; MANUSCRIPTS
- Publication
History of Science, 2024, Vol 62, Issue 1, p3
- ISSN
0073-2753
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/00732753231181285