Fergusson, James Tree and Serpent Worship

Fergusson, James Tree and Serpent Worship or, Illustrations of Mythology and Art in India in the First and Fourth Centuries after Christ. From the Sculptures of the Buddhist Topes at Sanchi and Amravati ... Second Edition, revised, corrected, and in great part re-written. London: India Museum, 1873. 4to (33 x 24cm), original red half morocco gilt, xvi 274 pp., lithographic frontispiece, 101 plates numbered 1-100 (including 10A), albumen print photographs or lithographs, photographs mounted as issued (often one on each side of a single leaf, numbered in all cases as separate plates), publisher's postscript slip, joints cracked with front board remaining attached only via new endpapers, frontispiece, title-page and first leaf of text strengthened in gutter, dust-soiling and a few spots to top edges of mounts, numerical ink-stamp to margin of p. 33, mount for photographic plates 95 and 96 creased across upper fore corner [Gernsheim 419]; Malcolm, John. Malcolm's History of Persia (Modern) edited and adapted to the Persian Translation of Mirza Hairat, with Notes and Dissertations by Lieut.-Colonel M. H. Court, 15th Bengal Cavalry. Lahore: printed at the "Civil and Military Gazette" Press, Lahore, 1888. Folio (32.5 x 20cm), modern half leather, [2] ix [3] 290, title-page slightly nicked and marked and with small annotation to upper inner corner, light marginal soiling elsewhere, last 2 leaves slightly nicked and with damp-staining to corners; Kaye, G. R (editor). The Bakhshali Manuscript. A Study in Medieval Mathematics. Calcutta: Government of India Central Publication Branch [volume 2, Delhi: Manager of Publications], 1927-33. First edition, 2 volumes, 4to, original blue quarter morocco, photogravure plate (spotted), 47 ?collotype plates, volume 2 spine rubbed Qty: (4) Note: James Fergusson travelled to India after leaving school, and within ten years as an indigo planter in Bengal had made a sufficient fortune to dedicate himself to the study of art and architecture. Sanchi, near Bhopal in modern-day Madhya Pradesh, is the oldest Buddhist sanctuary in existence, dating from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. The stupa at Amaravati, in what is now Andhra Pradesh, was founded around 200 BC. Fergusson's account was first published in 1868. The photographs are by W. H. Griggs and James S. Waterhouse; Waterhouse eventually became surveyor-general to the Monumental Photographic Survey of India. The Civil and Military Gazette, publishers of this edition of Malcolm's Persia, was where Rudyard Kipling began his professional life in India, joining as a sub-editor in 1882.