¹ E. W. West, The Book of the Mainyo-i-khard. The Pazand and Sanskrit Texts (in Roman characters) as arranged by Neryosengh Daval, in the fifteenth century, with an English translation, a Glossary of the Pazand text, containing the Sanskrit, Persian and Pahlavi Equivalents, a Sketch of Pazand Grammar, and an Introduction (Stuttgart and London, 1871), p. IV.

² For more, see A. L. Molendijk, Friedrich Max Müller and the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford and New York, 2016).

³ See D. Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization 1773-1835 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969).

⁴ By the nineteenth century and until a few decades ago, the name of the city used to be ‘Poona’. Yet, in 1978, the name of the town was changed to ‘Pune’, just as ‘Bombay’ became ‘Mumbai’; this modern name will be used, unless in quotations.

⁵ Samples of their correspondence are published in M. Timuş, Cosmogonie et eschatologie: Articulations conceptuelles du système religieux zoroastrien (Paris, 2015), pp. 266–272. A Manackjee Cursetjee (1851–1898) counted as the third Sir Jamshedjee Jejeebhoy Baronet of Bombay. However, he was born too late to have been in correspondence with Burnouf in 1837.

⁶ For instance, on the contribution of the Parsis to the education system in Mumbai, see Z. Shroff, The Contribution of Parsis to Education in Bombay City (1820-1920) (Mumbai, 2001).

⁷ Letter of Edward W. West to Nicholson Esquire, Superintending Director, Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company, Bombay, 17 November 1849; see IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.6, f. 44.

⁸ The present article thereby seeks to update A. Hintze, ‘Edward William West and the Pahlavi Codex MK’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 31.3 (2021), pp. 545–557, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186321000225, in which the author identified only three journeys.

⁹ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 14. Some years later, in September 1851, when West applied for another job, he reckoned among his significant works to have ‘designed and erected, entirely unassisted, the huge building at Colaba, for the Apollo Co.’, IOR Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 302. This is probably the reason why one finds among his papers drawings for the placement of the Apollo Cotton buildings within the Colaba quarter.

¹⁰ J. S. Palsetia, ‘Parsis and Bombay city: community and identity in the nineteenth century’, in Bombay before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos, (eds.) P. Kidambi, M. Kamat, and R. Dywer (Oxford, 2019), p. 48.

¹¹ Ibid, p. 48.

¹² Ibid, p. 49.

¹³ Ibid, pp. 48–49.

¹⁴ ON APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY. HENRY FAWCETT and Others,—Appellants; the JUSTICES of BOMBAY,—Respondents * [June 19 and 20, 1845], https://vlex.co.uk/vid/fawcett-and-others-v-802942497 (accessed 27 September 2024).

¹⁵ ‘[…] of the Cotton Press Company, and undertook to promote, by all possible lawful ways and means, the interest of the said co-partnership, and agreed, that should any member of the said co-partnership employ any other cotton screw or screws, than those belonging to the said Apollo Cotton Press Company, without previously assigning a satisfactory reason to the managing committee of the co-partnership, such member should not only forfeit his dividend or dividends for the year, but a fine of one thousand rupees for each share in the co-partnership, held by such member, should be levied. Under the above agreement, which is in full force and operation, the Company are now in the occupation, as owners, of two large warehouses, situate[d] respectively in Marine and Apollo streets within the Fort Walls of Bombay. In those warehouses, extensive and powerful machinery is erected and supported by strong masonry, and sunk in and affixed to the soil, by means of which cotton is compressed and packed into bales ready for shipment and exportation. The purchase-money of the above buildings amounted to two lakhs of rupees; the cost of paying and erecting the machinery therein, amounted altogether to the sum of eight lakhs of rupees. By the aid of cotton press machinery, a bale of cotton, standing from four to four and a half feet high, when brought to the warehouse, is reduced to two feet, and then packed and corded very strongly, ready for measurement and shipment. [146] No impressed cotton is exported from Bombay. There are four other cotton screws existing, and in operation in Bombay. The motive power in all these screws is applied by men using capstan bars, as in a ship, but in the presses of the Company, although the motive power is the same, and applied in the same manner as in their own and the other screws, less human labour is required, owing to the peculiar nature of the machinery. The average total number of bales of cotton, annually prepared for exportation, at the several presses and screws in Bombay, amounts to about four hundred and fifty thousand. Of this number, one hundred thousand bales, or two-ninths, belong to the members of the Company individually, and are prepared at their presses; of the remaining bales, two hundred thousand at the least are also pressed at the Apollo presses’, https://vlex.co.uk/vid/fawcett-and-others-v-802942497 (accessed 27 September 2024).

¹⁶ Some excerpts of the West family diary are included in Appendix A at the end of this article.

¹⁷ See Appendix A.

¹⁸ ‘At an early date Edward introduced Arthur to Iranjee Cowasjee, a very old Parsi gentleman, and a great friend of their father and uncle when they were in Bombay, twenty-five to thirty years before. He was a large shareholder in the Apollo Co. but sold his shares in April 1848’, IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 82. The note refers to the period 1843–1848. The diary was obviously written long after the return to England as an attempt to offer a well-informed view on the significant events that the members of the family went through during their stay in India and Bombay.

¹⁹ See Kopf, British Orientalism; J. S. Palsetia, ‘Parsi and Hindu traditional and non-traditional responses to Christian conversion in Bombay, 1839-45’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion LXXIV.3 (2006), p. 617.

²⁰ Ibid, p. 618.

²¹ Ibid; D. Sheffield, ‘The quest for the historical Zarathushtra: Parsis and philologists on the prophet in nineteenth-century Bombay’, Journal of the K R Cama Oriental Institute LXXV (2015 [2018]), pp. 114–115.

²² IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 82; IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 40; see also Appendix A.

²³ Nowadays, the Salsette Island is integrated into the archipelago that forms Mumbai; in other words, it is a part of the big city. It is not certain that, by 1850, the situation was the same. The Island of Salsette could have been considered external to the city of Bombay.

²⁴ (March 1848) ‘The interior of it (Chaitya cave) is in the shape of a church, with an arched roof, and a row of columns down each side and round the inner end’, IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 131; (January 1850) ‘Edward occupied himself in studying the inscription in the Chaitya Cave. He found that he could identify about four letters in every five, and detected some errors in the copies of some of them that had been made by other persons and published. He spent some time in an endeavour to take impressions of them on wetted paper, but found the surface of the rock too rough’, IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 318; for more, see Appendix A.

²⁵ Letter of Edward W. West to Nicholson Esquire, Superintending Director, Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company, Bombay, 17 November 1849; see IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.6, f. 44.

²⁶ See IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 152.

²⁷ One finds a long description of the return trip to Bombay, Mss Eur.D. 1184, ff. 286–296.

²⁸ In total, 108 letters from Edward to Arthur (1852–1960) are preserved; cf. IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.20; and another couple of letters from Arthur to Edward (1849–1853); cf. IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.19.

²⁹ See e.g. E. W. West, ‘Art. I. Copies of inscriptions from the Buddhist cave temples of Kanheri, & in the Island of Sulsette, with a plan of the Kanheri caves (presented 12^th April 1860)’, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1861), pp. 1–14; E. W. West, ‘Art. VII. Description of some of the Kanheri topes, with a plan and drawings (presented 10^th October 1861)’, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1861), pp. 116–120; E. W. West, ‘Art. XI. Results of excavations in Cave No. 13 at Kanheri (with a plan and five photos) (presented 10^th October 1861)’, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1861), pp. 157–160. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine how an engineer, employed to survey the functional state of the machines in the company responsible for the best production of cotton in India at that time, could have become interested in Zoroastrianism and the philology of its field. Yet, being an exceptional character, Edward West succeeded in doing both. Moreover, both of his brothers, Arthur and Henry, applied their interests to Asian philology, without turning them into scholarly publications, like Edward did. As their rich correspondence testifies, with Henry, he had exchanges on questions of Gujarati and other related philological problems and, with Arthur, he exchanged considerations on the Kanheri inscriptions and the Sanskrit language.

³⁰ See A. Hintze, ‘Martin Haug’, Encyclopaedia Iranica XII.1 (2003), pp. 61–63; C. Herrenschmidt, ‘Once upon a time Zoroaster’, History and Anthropology III (1987), pp. 209–237; Sheffield, ‘Quest for the historical Zarathushtra’.

³¹ Herrenschmidt, ‘Once upon a time Zoroaster’, pp. 209–237.

³² Ibid, pp. 222–223.

³³ See Sheffield, ‘Quest for the historical Zarathushtra’, pp. 117–120. For the criticism against Spiegel of another Iranist, namely Carl Friedrich Andreas, see the latter’s letter to Theodor Nöldeke, 8 February 1874, in C. F. Andreas, Iranistische Mitteilungen 15. Jahrgang, herausgegebn von Helmhart Kanus-Credé (Allendrof an der Eder, 1985), pp. 7–12.

³⁴ The way in which this antagonism, specific to German orientalism, reverberated around the local Parsi publications and network, involving K. R. Cama, Spiegel’s disciple, and Dastur Hoshengji JamaspAsana, Haug’s closer friend, is very well described and documented in Sheffield, ‘Quest for the historical Zarathushtra’, pp. 122–130.

³⁵ West 57A, ‘On my tour in Gujarat undertaken in 1863-64’, EWW 1/81/ according to RAS’s Archive Hub, https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/d6a209f8-9356-38e8-a419-078f375ba02a?component=11a827d7-9934-34e6-8f62-633023f864a9.

³⁶ A. W. Jackson, ‘West, Edward Willian (1824-1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, revised by J. B. Katz, online version, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-36836 (accessed October 2022).

³⁷ It is possible that Rev. John Wilson might have introduced West to the JamaspAsana family, but, for the moment, I have not found any proof of this connection.

³⁸ According to R. P. Karanjia, M. Stausberg, ‘JamaspAsa, Dastur Jamaspji Minocherji’, Encyclopaedia Iranica XIV.5 (2008), pp. 457–458.

³⁹ West, Book of the Mainyo-i-khard, p. iii, emphasis added.

⁴⁰ ‘Visit from D. Jamaspji bringing Vishtāsp Yasht and Teheran Vendidad, and taking back Shāhnāmeh and Nīrangistān. He says […] that there was formerly a copy of the Dēnkard in the library of D. Nōsherwānji at Poona, on loose folios, and said to be complete, but it was thrown away, or destroyed, by his mother who thought it was worthless excerpts as wastepaper’, note of 7 January 1876, West 57D, f. 28.

⁴¹ West 57D, ff. 35–38; see Appendix B at the end of this article.

⁴² West 57D, ff. 9–23, and fig. 4, a detail of the description of the ‘lesser’ as opposed to ‘greater’ hōm ceremony.

⁴³ West 57D, ff. 24–27.

⁴⁴ Note of 22 January 1876, in West 57D, ff. 32–35.

⁴⁵ Andreas, Iranistische Mitteilungen, p. 89. According to Andreas’s diary, Dastur Hoshengji JamaspAsana complained about Haug, based on an entry from 13 September 1875; see Andreas, Iranistische Mitteilungen, pp. 55–56. To his diary, Andreas entrusted his thoughts about Hoshengji as well, a ‘fugitive dilettante’, and expressed his reluctance with regard to the scientific authority of Haug or Spiegel in annotations dated to 17 September 1875; see Andreas, Iranistische Mitteilungen, p. 81.

⁴⁶ West 57D, f. 8. Complementary information can be found in the letter that West had addressed to Andreas by May 1876; see Appendix B.

⁴⁷ See M. JamaspAsana, Pahlavi, Gujarāti and English Dictionary (London, 1877), vol. i.

⁴⁸ See the letter of Andreas to Minocherji JamaspAsana, 17 October 1875, Bombay: ‘it will prove a great help towards the thorough investigation of the historical development of the Persian language’, published in ibid, pp. cxlvi–cxlvii. For his part, West qualified the dictionary as ‘popular’ (as opposed to the ‘scientific’ genre), ‘the desiderata’ of which ‘are copiousness and correctness, and your work appears to supply these wants in a very satisfactory manner’, letter of West, Bombay, 20 April 1875; see ibid, p. cxli.

⁴⁹ Ibid, p. xii.

⁵⁰ The Definitive Zoroastrian Critique of Islam: Chapters 11-12 of the Škand gumānīg wizār by Mardānfarrox son of Ohrmazddād, translated with commentary by C. C. Sahner (Liverpool, 2023), p. 48.

⁵¹ The ‘Introduction’ to Shikand-gûmânik Vijâr: The Pâzand-Sanskrit Text together with a Fragment of the Pahlavi. Edited with a Comparative Vocabulary of the three versions and an Introduction by Hôshang Dastûr Jâmâspji Jâmâsp-Asânâ and E. W. West (Bombay, 1887), p. vii.

⁵² F. Veit (ed.), Festschrift zur Erinnerung an die Haug-Feier in Ostdorf (Tübingen, 1909), p. 91, emphasis added.

⁵³ Ibid, p. 99.

⁵⁴ It is possible that Haug planned to check the work of Dastur Hoshangji. Eventually, as he was getting too old, he might have handed this task over to Edward West; see also E. W. West, Verzeichniss der orientalischen Handschriften aus dem Nachlasse des Professor Dr. Martin Haug in München (München, 1876), p. 8, no. 32. According to Christian Barholomae’s Catalogue of the Zoroastrian manuscripts at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, there are two manuscripts of ŠGW that belonged to Martin Haug: MH 19 (Cod. Zend. 64) and MH 32 (Cod. Zend. 77); see C. Barholomae, Die Zendhandschriften der K. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in München. Beschrieben von Christian Bartholomae (Munich, 1915), pp. 226ff., pp. 296ff. MH 32 contains only the first five chapters of ŠGW, with the reconstructed Middle Persian version. The manuscript was copied by Dastur Hoshangji JamaspAsana, probably for Haug’s use. This manuscript could be related to some of Haug’s papers, among which see West 33.

⁵⁵ See M. Haug and E. W. West (eds.), The Book of Arda Viraf: The Pahlavi Text Prepared by Destur Hoshangji Jamaspji Asa, Revised and Collated with Further Mss., with an English Translation and Introduction and an Appendix Containing the Texts and Translations of the Gosh-i Fryano and Hadokht Nask (Bombay and London, 1872).

⁵⁶ On the division of manuscripts within the JamaspAsana family by the sixteenth century, see above and Appendix B.

⁵⁷ Shikand-gûmânik Vijâr, p. xx.

⁵⁸ Ibid, p. xxiii.

⁵⁹ West 17, p. 237, and Fig. 5 with the reproduction of West’s note. In his annotations that prepared the introduction to the critical edition, West also mentions a manuscript J135: ‘JE is probably copied direct from J135, and JJ is derived from it through some intermediate copy’, West 25, p. 236. On the story of the manuscript JJ, how it travelled to Iran and returned to India, see Hintze, ‘Edward William West and the Pahlavi Codex MK’.

⁶⁰ See L. C. Casaretlli, ‘Friedrich von Spiegel: obituary’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1906), pp. 1038–1039. Indeed, the fact that he was teaching in Erlangen did not prevent Spiegel from regularly returning to Munich. Contrary to Haug, who died when he was only 49 years old, Spiegel lived long enough (85 years) to improve his methods and ideas.

⁶¹ Shikand-gûmânik Vijâr, p. xxi, emphasis added.

⁶² West 17, p. 235, fig. 6, emphasis added.

⁶³ A. Cantera, Vers une édition de la liturgie longue zoroastrienne: pensées et travaux préliminaires (Paris, 2014), p. 153.

⁶⁴ F. Müller, ‘Kleine Mitteilungen: a catalogue of the Zand and Pahlavi MSS. belonging to Khan Bahadur Dr. Hoshangji J. Āsā, Sirdār of the first class, Dastoor of the Parsīs in the Dekhan’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgendlandes 3 (1889), p. 200.

⁶⁵ Ibid, p. 197.

⁶⁶ JamaspAsana 1932 (unpublished), pp. 22–23. I thank Daniel Sheffield for having shared this document with me.

⁶⁷ J. C. Katrak, Oriental Treasures Being Condensed Tabular Descriptive Statement of Over a Thousand Manuscripts and of Their Colophons Written in Iranian & Indian Languages and Lying in Private Libraries of Parsis in Different Centres of Gujarat Together with Minute Classified Contents and Introduction; Detailed Historical, Biographical & literary Appendices; Critical and Philological Notes; Exhaustive Indexes, Bibliography, etc., with a Forward by M. P. Khareghat (Alavi Book Depot, 1941), pp. xiii, 230.

⁶⁸ Katrak, Oriental Treasures, p. 140. The manuscript was preserved in the library of Erwad Bomanji Aspandyarji Dastur Rabadina (Agiari Street, Rustompura, Surat), Katrak, Oriental Treasures, pp. 137ff.

⁶⁹ Hintze, ‘Edward William West and the Pahlavi Codex MK’.

⁷⁰ Shikand-gûmânik Vijâr, p. xxxvii.

⁷¹ Ibid, p. xxxvii.

⁷² West, Book of the Mainyo-i-khard, p. IV.

⁷³ Research conducted in April 2015, during my research stay as a research assistant at Collège de France, Paris.

⁷⁴ Research conducted in October 2016, with the help of the Collège de France, Paris.

⁷⁵ Research conducted in October 2017, during my research stay as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, Berlin.

⁷⁶ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 1.

⁷⁷ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 80.

⁷⁸ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 81.

⁷⁹ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 82. The note refers to the period 1843–1848. The diary was obviously written long after West’s return to England as an attempt to offer a well-informed view on the significant events that the members of the family went through during their stay in Bombay, India.

⁸⁰ Note from 4 December 1847, IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 86.

⁸¹ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 99, on a wedding ceremony that took place on 31 December 1847. The priests are performing the ceremony at the house of the couple to be married.

⁸² IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 83.

⁸³ Note on 5 December 1847, IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 87.

⁸⁴ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 84.

⁸⁵ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 160.

⁸⁶ Probably 1843.

⁸⁷ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 82.

⁸⁸ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 40.

⁸⁹ Nowadays, the Salsette Island is integrated into the archipelago that forms Mumbai; in other words, it is a part of the big city. It is not certain that, by 1850, the situation was the same. The Island of Salsette could have been considered external to the city of Bombay.

⁹⁰ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 131.

⁹¹ IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 318.

⁹² IOR Mss Eur.D. 1184.1, f. 100.

⁹³ West 57D ‘Personalia’, ff. 35–38 (travel book from his journey in India 1875–1876).