Collection level description created by Susan Thomas, Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts.
James Fraser (1713-54), of the East India Company, was an author and collector of oriental manuscripts. See the
Persian, Sanskrit and Arabic manuscripts, with a little material in Gujarati, Hindi and Turkish, collected by James Fraser, 14th-18th century. Many of the Persian manuscripts are said to have once belonged to the royal library of Isfahan. Fraser's Sanskrit manuscripts, forty-one in number and all post-Vedic, were the earliest collection in that language which came into the possession of Oxford University.
The manuscripts were amassed while Fraser was in the employ of the East India Company early in the eighteenth century. At the end of his book,
The manuscripts were transferred to the Bodleian Library in 1872.
Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid
reader's card (for admissions procedures see
A card catalogue, arranged by language, located in the Oriental Reading Room contains brief descriptions of manuscripts.
Many of the Fraser manuscripts are included in E. Sachau, H. Eth and A.F.L. Beeston
The Indic language manuscripts are described in Theodor Aufrecht, Moriz Winternitz, A.B. Keith