Private Collections

India in Ink: The Library of Dr Raj Krishna

10 September 2026

Dominic Somerville-Brown

Lyon & Turnbull are honored to present India in Ink: The Library of Dr Raj Krishna, an important collection of several thousand rare and antiquarian books spanning the 17th to the 20th centuries. The first selection from this remarkable library will be offered in the next Books & Manuscripts auction on 01 October 2026.

The library chronicles the making of modern India from the viewpoints of a dazzling cast of eyewitnesses both Indian and British, including soldiers and colonial officials, munshis and orientalists, archaeologists and art historians, big-game hunters and naturalists, pioneering women travellers, missionaries, begums, rajahs, and Mughal emperors. The 130 lots in the October sale cover key periods in history, from the arrival of the East India Company in Bengal, to its wars with Tipu Sultan and the Sikh Empire, the Indian Mutiny and its aftermath, and the progression towards Indian independence in the early 20^th century.

Books & Manuscripts

Browse the catalogue for the collection, to be offered on 01 October in Edinburgh.

Beginning with some of the first books printed in Calcutta under British auspices in the late 18^th century, the collection tracks the development of Indian print culture in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, an ecosystem of such diversity and interconnectedness as to defy straightforward categorisation, with Indian and non-Indian scholars and printers producing books in English and vernacular languages for British and native audiences, in cities across the Indian Subcontinent, from Lahore to Shillong and Dehradun to Jaffna. There are landmark works of Indian philology, confidential government reports, rare survivals from the Non-Cooperation Movement, photographic galleries of Indian rulers, locally printed city guides and memoirs of everyday life under the Raj, and works on Indian astronomy, natural history, music and art.

A number of the voices are well-known to scholars of India and collectors of Indian books. A great many more, though not destined to become household names, all made their own unique contributions to the history of India and left at least one book to posterity, a cast of characters including a pair of young Parsi shipwrights from 19th-century Bombay, a Transylvanian homeopath who served as court physician to Ranjit Singh, and a British forestry commissioner who became an expert on the care of elephants. Over a lifetime of dedicated collecting, Dr Raj Krishna sought to bring the endeavours of these people to light, and his library is their story.

We are grateful to the family of Dr Raj Krishna for providing the following biography:

Dr Raj Krishna was born in Dhonkeli, Uttar Pradesh, India in 1933. He earned his LLB degree and Masters of Law degree from Lucknow University in 1956. He subsequently received a PhD in Public International Law from Australian National University, Canberra, Australia in 1966. He began his career as a lecturer and Assistant Professor of Law at the Universities of the Punjab, Delhi and Lucknow before moving to the United States in 1969 to join the legal department of the World Bank, retiring in 1995 as Legal Advisor for the International Trade Law Unit.

Along with his wife, Darshan, he cofounded India School, Inc., a non-profit school which for over 50 years, has been dedicated to teaching the languages, arts, and culture of South Asia to the Washington DC metropolitan region. Dr. and Mrs. Krishna were among the first in the Indian community to organize, sponsor, and present many world-renowned artists from India. He founded and wrote several issues of "Highlights," the first magazine on Indian culture published in Washington DC. He also authored several articles about Indian history and art and edited the book From Thames to Hooghly: Calcutta Heritage 1690–1990.

An avid collector and scholar, Dr Krishna had a great passion for books and photographs on India, in particular the era of the British Raj. His love of India was evidenced by his vast and unique library, a collection reflecting history, philosophy, nature, religion, travel, art, and music. The library of Dr. Raj Krishna was, in every sense, a portrait of the man himself.

Having lived with these books for years, I can say that this collection is a dream come true for any collector aspiring become a master collector, and for anyone seeking to build a library to be sought out by every Indophile looking for scarce material on Indian history, religion, philosophy, and travel, written by scholars both known and unknown.

Darshan Krishna, wife of Dr Raj Krishna

Specialist

Dominic Somerville-Brown

Head of Books & Manuscripts (Maternity Cover)