Bhajan Lal MSS dealer

[Thrasher, Allen]

Dominik,

I have not heard of him, and certainly LOC has no MSS with his label, but if you or  anyone has a sample of his handwriting I would appreciate a scan.  It might help to identify the dealer from whom Horace Poleman bought a large collection of Indo-Aryan mss in 1941, by comparison with a card index and the titles on brown paper wrappers.

Probsthain's rediscovered a cache of Indo-Aryan mss five years ago or so, along with others in other Asian languages.  The Sanskrit etc. ones had a printed label on the covers which was then filled in with particulars of each ms.  LOC just missed getting them with end-of-the-fiscal-year money, alas.  Anyway, I can't remember whether Probsthain's name, that of an Indian dealer, or nobody's was on the labels.  Did you examine these?  LOC did get succeed in getting some Chinese and Persian mss from the same cache.  I will ask my colleagues if these have printed labels in English on them and if so examine them and report back.

Allen



-----Original Message-----
From: Indology [mailto:INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Dominik Wujastyk
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2010 1:43 PM
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Bhajan Lal MSS dealer

Has anyone come across the bookseller and manuscript dealer Bhajan Lal, who was active in Amritsar and Bharatpur in the 1920s-1940s?  He sold many manuscripts through Banarsi Das, Lecturer in Hindi at Lahore Oriental College (and colleague of Woolner), both to Lahore and to the Wellcome Library in London.  Many MSS in these collections have his distinctive dealers label stuck to their covers.

I would be interested to hear whether anyone else has come across this Bhajan Lal.

Best, and thanks,
Dominik Wujastyk