DUTCH SOURCES ON SOUTH ASIA C. 1600-1825 (VOLUME 5): PHILIP ANGEL`S DEEX-AUTAERS: VAISNAVA MYTHOLOGY FROM MANUSCIPT TO BOOK MARKET IN THE CONTEXT OF T

In 1658, a Dutch East India Company merchant by the name of Philip Angel presented a manuscript to Company Director Carel Hartsinck. It was intended to get into Hartsinck s good books: Angel had been recalled to the VOC_headquarters at Batavia in disgrace for engaging in private trade and was to account for his actions in a hearing. Back home in Holland, Philip Angel had been a painter and a published author. The manuscript recounts the well-known Puranic myths of the avataras of Vishnu. It conformed to all the contemporary conventions of an exotic manuscript and reflects his artistic skills. But Angel offered no details of how he acquired the manuscript, in what language, or who assisted him. This requires an investigation into the practices of information-gathering on Indian religious texts by important players of the time, ranging from Portuguese Jesuits to literati at the Mughal court. Finally, without acknowledgement of its author, Angel s manuscript ended up on the commercial European book market where it gained a conspicuous place within the corpus of seventeenth-century Dutch literature on the East