Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c3.27

c3.27

It is important for the reader to know that till about 1964, Dharampal merely had a layman's knowledge of archives and the records and material they generally held. His first acquaintance with the archival record on India began at Chennai (previously Madras) during 1964-65 but expanded and deepened over the years. He discovered that most of the material dated from around 1700 A.D. and owed its creation largely to British needs, even when these archives held some Indian language materials on paper or palm leaves. (The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the various European Christian as well as commercial institutions which began to come to India from the mid-16th century also maintained similar archives relating to their encounter with India but these were smaller.)