CHAPTER II. 
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS, 
The study of anthropology, to use the term in its widest 
sense, was encouraged by Sir William Jones under several 
headings in his inaugural address to the Asiatic Society of 
Bengal, and it is probable that many of the specimens that 
had already accumulated in the Society’s possession when 
Dr. Wallich wrote proposing the formation of a regular museum 
would now come under this heading. In the Asiatick Re¬ 
searches for 1814 there is a reference to the presentation 
by Mr. J. Brown of a ^‘set of side arms belonging to the 
inhabitants of Nepaul, consisting of one cutlass, a knife and 
a steel and flint for striking fire, in a leathern case,” and to 
various gifts including a brass standish and pen case” from 
Mr. Robert Home, the artist. Some of these objects are still 
in the Museum, in which a set of Javanese knives and 
daggers said to have been presented by Sir Stamford Raffles 
is also preserved. 
Unfortunately, as is so often the case in old museum 
collections, a large proportion of the oldest specimens have 
lost their value owing to the fact that they were not properly 
labelled at the time they were received, or that the labels 
have since been lost. An interesting little book or rather 
portfolio of lithographs published in 1828 enables us, how¬ 
ever, to trace some specimens. This work bears the title 
“Asiatic Museum Illustrated. Part I. Comprising Figures 
of all the Models that were presented to the Museum by Miss 
Tytler.. By Messrs. Savignhac and Pearson”. 
Apparently Part II was never issued. Part I includes a 
portrait of Sir William Jones, a drawing of the Asiatic 
Society’s rooms in Park Street (reproduced as the frontispiece 
of this volume) and figures of a number of models of Indian 
implements, appliances, conveyances and buildings, made 
under the supervision of Miss Tytler, a relative of the well- 
known naturalist. Colonel R. C. Tytler. A few of these 
