Category Archive

December 16th marked the 119th anniversary of the birth of our founding Trustee Sir Harold Bailey in 1899, just before the turn of the century – as he often reminded us. During his lifetime he regularly held a birthday tea-party on that date to which he invited colleagues and their partners. An especially charming custom was to present each of the ladies with a scented freesia. However, the main attraction was always the cake, a traditional fruit cake on which he had inscribed a word. Usually the word was too …

A new series of lectures at the AIIT begins next Friday 26 October. All are welcome. Lectures begin at 5.30pm, refreshments from 5pm. Unless otherwise indicated, lectures are held at: Ancient India & Iran Trust 23 Brooklands Avenue Cambridge CB2 8BG 26 October: Cambridge Festival of Ideas. Christine van Ruymbeke, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge; Ancient India and Iran Trust. Literary Criticism and the Pendulum of Taste: The Reception of the Anvar-e Sohayli BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL for this event via the Festival of Ideas website 9 November: …

We are pleased to make available the summaries of talks given at the symposium The History of Lahore and the Preservation of its Historic Buildings, held in Cambridge in October 2017 and organised by AIIT trustee Sir Nicholas Barrington and Dr Abdul Majid Sheikh. The booklet provides informal summaries of the talks as drafted by the speakers themselves, together with pictures of the main monuments discussed. It is planned that an academic volume of the proceedings will be published by the British Association for South Asian Studies, probably in 2020. …

Written by James Cormick. By now the Muntjac deer that regularly forage in our garden will have noticed a new and potentially delicious addition to their larder. It is a young tree, with beautiful pinnate leaves, recently planted (on Friday 18 May 2018) in the south-eastern corner of the lawn. And although the Muntjac is not a native species, the tree will almost certainly jog its ancestral memory, for the tree is a Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) and is as widely spread in China, the deer’s original home, as it is …

The Annual Allchin Symposium on South Asian Archaeology was established to commemorate the work of Raymond and Bridget Allchin, and the outstanding contribution they made to the development of South Asian Studies in the United Kingdom. The UK is currently home to the largest community of scholars working on South Asia outside of South Asia itself. Yet, until recently, there has been no regular forum to meet, exchange ideas and share research. The Annual Allchin Symposium provides an opportunity to bring together UK-based scholars working in South Asian Archaeology, and …