[BITList] Fwd: [INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ] David Solomon Erulkar's fabulous maritime history of India

[John Feltham]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar" <bosham at gmail.com>
Date: 22 September 2009 6:41:40 PM AEST
To: <india-british-raj at rootsweb.com>
Subject: [INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ] David Solomon Erulkar's fabulous maritime  
history of India
Reply-To: india-british-raj at rootsweb.com

Do our Australian members know anything about the Erulkar
Collection at the University of Western Australia? It ''focuses
on the history of the Eastern Indian Ocean region, and
especially the maritime history of India. The name derives
from David Solomon Erulkar, an Indian shipping executive
who accumulated a library of rare books, manuscripts, journals
and other materials with the intention of writing a definitive
history of Indian maritime affairs. Erulkar's personal collection
comprises some 75% of the Scholars' Centre collection. The
remainder of the collection includes rare books and other works
of interest added from the Library's own collections. There are
about 2,500 volumes in the Erulkar Collection, as well as 15,000
pages of manuscripts, documents, and letters.''
http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/about_the_uwa_library/about_our_collections/special_collections/erulkar_collection

I was intrigued by the name Erulkar - it is distinctly Marathi-sounding.
And so it is, though the person is Jewish. (Kar - kur- is a Marathi
word with several usages; in surnames it is a suffix denoting the
O' or de in European names - for example, my surname Nimkhedkar
means of or belonging to Nimkhed - my ancestral place.

Nemawarkars, Erulkars, Ashtamkars, Mazgaonkars are some of
the few remaining Marathi-speaking Jews of India.

David Solomon Erulkar also must have been one of them. This is
his potted biography =

Born in Bombay in the late 19th century, Erulkar attended Cambridge
University and later joined the Scindia Steamship Company Ltd. A
staunch nationalist, he joined the Indian Chamber of Commerce of
Great Britain from where he pursued the cause of Indian shipping.
In 1931 he became a delegate to the International Labour Conference
in Geneva and, early in the same year, an observer to the Karachi
Congress, about which he wrote a London Letter. In 1937, on behalf
of Indian shipping interests, he became involved with the Imperial
Shipping Committee, before which he gave evidence. His political
convictions brought him into contact with the Indian Congress Party
and Gandhi, as well as other leading political figures of the day.

Although he had settled in London in the 1930s, representing Indian
interests, Erulkar responded to the call, and left for Calcutta when
India became independent in 1947. That same year he was appointed
a member of the Panel of Shipowners of the Imperial Shipping Committee
and also participated in the in the Commonwealth Shipping Committee.

Erulkar collected the largest privately owned library of original  
letters,
documents, manuscripts and books ever assembled on the subject of
Indian maritime history. The collection itself may at first appear to be
an eccentric conglomeration but the seemingly random accumulation
of materials becomes clear when understood against the background
of Erulkar's obsession. The painstaking accumulation of some 2000
volumes, over 20 cardboard boxes of pamphlets, notes, correspondence,
minutes of diverse committees and the acquired parts of the Melville
papers, point to one single book that should have been the crown of
a committed, busy and dedicated life: the standard work on Indian
shipping.

Returning to London in his later years Erulkar continued to collect
material relating to Indian shipping but ceased to write, his  
perpetually
growing collection consuming much of his time. His book was never
completed. On his death in 1967 Erulkar's books, sets of periodicals,
maps, pamphlets, loose and pasted-in newspaper cuttings together
with 18th and 19th century manuscripts, collected over some forty-five
years, were gathered together in boxes, in company with fragments
of a book in Erulkar's own handwriting. The collection was purchased
by the University of Western Australia Library in the early 1970s.

http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/about_the_uwa_library/about_our_collections/special_collections/erulkar_collection/erulkar_collection

Pilot guides provided charts, maps, plans and sailing directions to aid
in the navigation of oceans and seas. The East India Pilot, housed in
the Erulkar Collection, is a rare and valuable 18th century pilot guide
designed by two Englishmen, Captain James Horsburgh F.R.S. and
John Walker, hydrographer to the East India Company.

The East India Pilot, or Oriental Navigator, on one hundred and
fourteen plates, containing a complete collection of charts, maps,
plans, with sailing directions for the navigation not only of the Indian
and China Seas, but those also between England and the Cape
of Good Hope. London: Sayer and Bennett, 1778

The Oriental navigator: new directions for sailing to and from the
East Indies: a companion to the East India Pilot.
London: Laurie and Whittle, 1794.
http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/about_the_uwa_library/about_our_collections/special_collections/erulkar_collection/the_east_india_pilot---Harshawardhan_Bosham 
  Nimkhedkar

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ooroo

Bad typists of the word, untie.