THE BASHAM PROJECT AT THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – TAASA Review December 2018

Chaitanya Sambrani M any readers have perhaps taken pleasure in looking over other peoples’ photo albums, speculating over intellectual itineraries and physical journeys, imagining the building blocks of the owner’s relationship to the world.

The experience can seem commonplace, as when visiting the home of a friend or family member, or extraordinary, when looking over the possessions of someone personally unknown or no longer alive.

The process is of course familiar to those who work with archives, piecing together through artefacts the lives and times of the person who put the collection together. Arthur Llewellyn Basham (b.1914, Loughton, UK–d.1986 Calcutta, India) was Professor of the History of South Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and from 1965, Professor of Asian Civilizations at the Australian National University, until his retirement in 1979...