We have rich resources for the study of South Asia past and present. South Asia is taken to include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Collection guides

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Help

Readers at desks in the Asian and African Reading Room

Asian & African Studies Reading Room

  • Find information on the shelves
  • Access online databases and electronic books and journals
  • Order collection items to the Reading Room via our catalogues

If you need help, just ask our Information Specialists at the Reference Enquiry desk or contact the Asian & African Studies Reference Team.

We offer a range of free Reader sessions and 1-2-1 consultations to help you make the best use of the Library's collections.

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Mon: 10.00 – 17.00
Tue – Sat: 09.30 – 17.00
Sun & English Public Holidays: closed

Opening hours for all Reading Rooms

Blog posts

The wreck of the Arniston

Thursday, May 25, 2023

In 1814 the East India ship Arniston was chartered as a British Government transport. The ship sailed from Portsmouth in June and made for Ceylon, via Madeira and the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Colombo in January 1815. The...

Robert Clive: From Hero to Villain

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

During Robert Clive’s lifetime, the East India Company commissioned two portraits showing him as a hero. The first of these, a marble statue of Clive in Roman military costume, was installed in 1764 inside East India House, their headquarters in...

100 years in the service of the East India Company

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Ship’s captain, free mariner, surgeon, cleric and infantrymen – seven members of one family, spanning three generations between 1767 and 1868. A story brought to life through the India Office Records at the British Library. Three generations of Barkers employed...

The Papers of Ralph and Penelope Tanner

Thursday, May 11, 2023

A recently catalogued collection of India Office Private Papers is now available to researchers in the British Library’s Asian & African Studies reading room. This comprises the papers of Ralph Esmond Selby Tanner, British Army and Burma Frontier Service; and...

More blog posts

Staff profiles

Malini Roy

Dr Malini Roy

Head of Visual Arts

Antonia Moon

Dr Antonia Moon

Lead Curator, post-1858 India Office Records

British Library India Office

Dr Margaret Makepeace

Lead Curator, East India Company Records

More staff members

Case studies

More Case studies
Parthasarathi Bhaumik Chevening Fellow British Library
…The British Library holds not only the 'official' history of South Asia, but also its 'histories', which are personal, pluralistic, and intimate.…

Nationalism, Partition, and Independence in South Asia, 1900-1950.

junaid
…The BL Newspaper collections are vast and in many cases also rare and unique in their content and collection histories. …

Junaid-Ul-Hassan is a Chevening Fellow working at the British Library on a project titled ‘News and Media in South Asia: Past and Present’.

Christian Poske
…The archival material provides fascinating insights…

Christian is evaluating the archival material of Dutch ethnomusicologist Arnold Adriaan Bake.

Featured collection items

Cashmere Gate, Delhi, by Robert Christopher Tytler and Harriet Tytler.

Cashmere Gate, Delhi

1858

View of Hindu Temples at Agori on the Son River

Oriental Scenery

Projects

A vibrant red and yellow painting of a Yali, a mythical dragon depicted here as a winged and fire-breathing creature

Sinhalese Manuscripts Pilot Digitisation Project

A pilot digitisation project that aims to make freely available four palm leaf manuscripts from the British Library’s Sinhalese manuscript collections

A colour photograph showing Nur Sobers-Khan, Lead Curator at the British Library, in a room turning the page of an open book which is sitting in a foam rest on top of a table. Beside the book are two more open books sat in rests.

Two Centuries of Indian Print

An international collaboration to digitise South Asian printed books

Poet Firdawsi gives away his paltry earnings to a bath attendant

Digital access to Persian Manuscripts

Our collection of Persian Manuscripts is one of the most important in the world

All projects

External links

The British Library is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Centre of South Asian Studies

University of Cambridge

Find my past

Records of baptisms, marriages, burials, wills, pensions, military and civil career information

The National Archives

Records relating to the East India Company, and the Family Records Centre