Introduction
The exhibition, Treasures of the Asia Collections, is designed to showcase some of the many items in the Cornell University Library's collection documenting the cultures of Asia. Cornell pioneered in the teaching of Asian studies, with a one-year course in Chinese offered as early as 1870. Cornell's first Japanese student came in 1870, the first Chinese student graduated in 1901, and six Indian students entered in 1905. After 1900, international students attended in increasing numbers, and many Cornellians went to Asia to work and travel. A department of Chinese Studies, created in 1944, was later broadened to Far Eastern Studies, including Southeast Asia and South Asia.
The strength of the library's collections parallel the university's academic developments. In the spring of 1868, Andrew Dickson White purchased the 5,000 volume library of the German Sanskritist and philologist Franz Bopp. In 1902, the library received special appropriations for books on the Far East, and Chinese students at Cornell presented some 350 Chinese-language books to the library in 1912. Distinguished private gifts expanded the collections. William Elliott Griffis, an Ithaca minister, presented his collection of about 2,000 Japanese-language books. Charles W. Wason bequeathed the library of over 9,000 volumes that he had acquired in eight years of intensive collecting. Additions to the South Asia collection were supported by gifts from the Cornell Hindustani Association and other alumni and friends. Cornell's strengths in Southeast Asia date back to the 1950s when the library agreed to acquire at least one copy of every publication of research value produced in Southeast Asian countries. Today, the Asia Collections - including the Wason Collection on East Asia, the Echols Collection on Southeast Asia, and the South Asia Collections, all among the finest in the world - are located in the Carl A. Kroch Library. Rare books, manuscripts, and visual materials relating to Asia are housed in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, also in Kroch Library.
Through books, manuscripts, photographs, and other documents, the exhibition highlights the culture and literature of countries including China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. For each area, works in both English and vernacular languages are included. Highlights include palm leaf manuscripts, a wood model of a Balinese festival village, the 15th century Chinese encyclopedia, and 17th century jade book, a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi, travelogues and sketchbooks from the 17th through 19th centuries, and a selection of materials from the Maeda Collection which features rare early postwar Japanese publications and translations of European literature. Also included are introductory cases on the collections themselves and on Asian students at Cornell and Cornellians in Asia.