516 
INTRODUCTION TO 
and again, between the third and fourth sets : Funes ceciderunt mihi in prceclaris , 
Ps. 15. 1 
Below this: Ad P. Claudium Aquauiua totius Societatis Prcepositum. 
In pencil, and in a different hand: Sanaa, 7 I dibus J anuarii 1591. 2 The year, 
first written in pencil, was traced again with ink. Close by, in the right margin, by 
Fr. Monserrate apparently, but in a different ink, a microscopic note: Expeditio ad 
Chahul | 6 Id. Feb. | 1581 | 446. | 3 4 * 
In the right margin, at the top, near Fr. Monserrate’ s name in the title, a pencil 
mark: Missionarius j cum P. Rodolfo \ Aquaviva \ A. S. H. 1582. 
I turn to the verso of the title-page and learn that the MS. was at one time in 
the Library of Fort William College (Calcutta) / whence it must have passed into the 
Metcalfe Hall Collection, and thence into the Imperial Library; for, at the bottom 
of the page occurs a red quadrangular seal with the words: Transferred from 
Imperial Library, 7 Apr. 1903. 
Transferred, and whither ? To St. Paul’s Cathedral Library (Anglican), Calcutta, 
where the Rev. W. K. Firminger discovered it in 1906. 
Mr. W. Corfield suggested the following explanation for the curious blunder 
which brought the MS. into St. Paul’s Cathedral Library. When the Metcalfe 
Hall Collection was, a few years back, merged into the Imperial Library and stock 
taken, the Librarian must have considered the work as "one of purely theological 
interest.” 
"It is with propriety,” he added, "that the book has become the property of 
the Cathedral Library, for it passed from Lord Wellesley’s Collection of Fort William 
to the Metcalfe Hall Collection, and was most probably given to the College by its 
Vice-Principal, the Rev. Claudius Buchanan, the man to whose strenuous and 
successful efforts was due the creation of the See of Calcutta in 1813.” 6 
Whatever may have been Dr. Buchanan’s connections with the See of Calcutta, 
the fact that he presented the book to Fort William College is, I am afraid, a 
mere assumption of Mr. W. Corfield’ s. 
There can be little doubt that the MS. was originally a precious heirloom of the 
Jesuits in India. Considering the extreme rarity of the work and its importance 
for the history of the Society , it would have been guarded with jealous care. What 
then brought it to Calcutta? I shall try, further on, to answer this query as well 
as the present state of our knowledge allows. 
For the present let me continue the description of the MS. and point out that 
on the recto of the title-leaf, just above the title, I read: " IP46 ” in printer’s ink. 
I Evidently an allusion to Monserrate’s six and a half years’ captivity in Arabia. 
1 “At Sanaa, on the 7th before the Ides of January, 1591.’’ — Of course, it ought to be 7 Idus. 
Kubul in Afghanistan. — “446” refers to fol. 44 verso. 
4 This college was founded by Marquis Wellesley on May 4th, 1800. 
Cf Bengal Past and Present, Calcutta, 1908, No. 2, p. 184. In his lecture on the Bengal District Records before 
the Indian Section of the Royal Society of Arts, January 18th, 1912, the Rev. W. K. Firminger gives 1906 as the date 
of discovery. Cf. The Englishman , Calcutta, February 6th, 1912. The discovery was announced at the time in the 
Calcutta newspapers. 
