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- Title
The cabinet of King Serfoji of Tanjore.
- Authors
Peterson, Indira Viswanathan
- Abstract
The Indian ruler Serfoji II of Tanjore (r. 1798 1832) was noted for his pursuit of European science, and for his library and collection. This essay attempts to trace the history of this unusual Indian collection, as well as to reconstruct its intellectual foundations, and to assess its implications for the history of ideas. It is argued that Serfoji had created a cabinet of science and art on the model of the European Kunstkammer, and that his cabinet bore the stamp of a particular configuration of ideas and practices relating to European science in the eighteenth century, transmitted to him through his education under German Pietist missionaries from Halle. The King's career as a collector illuminates a hitherto unstudied intersection of cultural currents in early nineteenth-century India, of Pietist Christianity, Enlightenment ideas of science and Indian responses to European science prior to the entrenchment of British colonial hegemony.
- Subjects
INDIA; CABINETS of curiosities; KINGS &; rulers; COLLECTORS &; collecting; NINETEENTH century
- Publication
Journal of the History of Collections, 1999, Vol 11, Issue 1, p71
- ISSN
0954-6650
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/jhc/11.1.71