Paper short abstract:

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was instrumental in opening up the linguistic horizons of European scholars in the 17th-18th centuries. This paper explores the scope and nature of VOC patronage by examining specific language documents from India, and tracing the fates of those documents.

Paper long abstract:

The United Dutch East India Company (VOC), constantly searching new trading grounds in South Asia, played an instrumental role in opening up the access to new linguistic material for the European scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its merchants, as well as religious and administrative personnel, were often the first ones to document new "exotic" languages by compiling language manuals, grammars and vocabularies which were eagerly awaited in Europe. However, the scope and nature of VOC's patronage varied according to place and time, and of course the spread of linguistic knowledge was far from the Company's top priority.

This paper will present the historical circumstances of creation, and consequent itineraries, of four manuscripts from India and Sri Lanka, concerning Sinhala, Tamil, Hindustani and Persian, where different geopolitical contexts led them to very different fates. Some of these documents were sent to the Netherlands and published, some remained in manuscript form only, and some never reached Europe. Their cases will be compared and contrasted with the fates of other linguistic materials created under the auspices of the VOC in South Asia.