Treasures of the Area Studies Collections: Reconsidering Primary Sources and Collections

South Asia material has been collected by the Yale University Library since the late 1840s, when Professor Edward Salisbury began teaching Sanskrit. In 1854, William Dwight Whitney received the first Edward E. Salisbury Professorship of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology. The Library’s South Asia Collection contains parts of Salisbury's and Whitney’s personal collections.

The Yale South Asia Collection also owes a debt of gratitude to the American Oriental Society, founded at Yale in 1842, for bringing the University's attention to the Indian subcontinent. The American Oriental Society’s library is located in the Sterling Memorial Library, and includes a large Sanskrit collection, plus many long runs of government documents and journals from all over South Asia.

The Yale University Library also briefly participated early on in the PL480 program, from approximately 1960 until the mid to late 1970s.

In 1999, the Yale University South Asia Committee (which later became the South Asian Studies Council) was established.  At the same time, Yale Library rejoined what is now called the Library of Congress South Asia Cooperative Acquisitions Program (SACAP), and works with both the New Delhi and Islamabad Field Offices, along with smaller book vendors across the subcontinent. 

Check out the Research Guide for South Asian Studies to learn more.