Snipped from - http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mp/2008/01/21/stories/2008012150360500.htm Monday, Jan 21, 2008 The Leyden Collection I'd never really thought about it before, till reader E.V. Rao wondered the other day about the three best-known collections in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library tended by the Tamil Nadu Department of Archaeology in the University of Madras's campus. "The Mackenzie, Brown and Leyden Collections are always mentioned," he writes, "but whereas the first two names are generally recalled, who or what was Leyden? Does it have anything to do with the Dutch city/ university of the same name?" I quickly discovered that the Dutch city and 450-year-old university were spelt 'Leiden', but it took a while longer to discover the reference was to a Dr. John Leyden, the son of a shepherd, whose laird helped the boy become another of those Edinburgh University qualified doctors who on arrival in Madras in the 19th Century were also appointed as Naturalists. But this Leyden had much more to his c.v. He arrived in Madras in 1803 as a 28-year-old who had also been ordained by the Church, had worked with Sir Walter Scott on his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, was a poet and linguist, and came with a commitment not to make a fortune here but to study the languages of Asia. [snip] ====== ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India