Mansel Longworth Dames

Mansel Longworth Dames (1850–1922) was a scholar of oriental and Portuguese languages.

Dames passed the Indian Civil Service examination in 1868, and on his arrival in India in 1870 was posted to the Punjab commission. He served continuously till his retirement in 1897, apart from in 1870 when he was on special duty with the troops during the Second Anglo-Afghan war.

Much of his service was passed in the trans-Indus district of Dera Ghazi Khan, where he had opportunities for studying the Baluch people (Baloch) and became an authority on the various dialects of the Baluch and Pushtu languages.

In 1891 he published a Baluchi grammar and text-book, used for many years as manuals of instruction. He contributed in 1904 to the monograph series of the Royal Asiatic Society an account of the Baluch, and in the following year the Royal Asiatic and the Folk-Lore Societies jointly published in two volumes his Popular Poetry of the Baluchis. In 1903 he contributed to the Folk-Lore Journal an article on "Folk-Lore of the Azores." He was an ardent student of Buddhist art on the north-west frontier of India, and brought with him from there a fine collection of sculpture of the Gandhara period. He also did valuable service in rearranging the Buddhist rooms of the British Museum. For more than twenty years he served the Royal Asiatic Society, for part of the time as a Vice-President and Joint-Treasurer, and in 1921 he acted as Honorary Secretary during the absence of Dr. F. W. Thomas.

After his retirement he prepared several important articles for the Encyclopaedia of Islam on subjects relating to that part of northern India which he had studied so closely. Besides Oriental languages he was an excellent Portuguese scholar, and his wide knowledge of Portuguese literature, and of the philology and geography of India, was illustrated in his admirable translation and annotations of The Book of Duarte Barbosa, edited for the Hakluyt Society in 1918–21. He compiled a memoir on the Portuguese and German colonies in Africa for the use of the Peace Congress at Versailles. He was also a member of the Numismatic Society and possessed a fine collection of oriental coins.

Longworth-Dames became a member of the Folk-Lore Society in 1892, served for many years on the Council, and was a regular attendant at its meetings, where he was recognised as "an accomplished scholar, while his geniality of manner won the affection of many friends." William Crooke's obituary for the society's journal adds, "modest and unassuming, and was always ready to take infinite trouble in assisting from his stores of knowledge correspondents who desired information". He died on 8 January 1922.

Selected publications

• Dames, Mansel Longworth (1904). The Baloch Race: A Historical and Ethnological Sketch. Asiatic Society Monographs. Vol. IV. London: Royal Asiatic Society. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Dames, Mansel Longworth (1907). Popular poetry of the Baloches (Volume 1). Asiatic Society Monographs. Vol. IX. London: Royal Asiatic Society. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Dames, Mansel Longworth (1918–1921). The book of Duarte Barbosa : an account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their inhabitants (2 Volumes). London: Hakluyt Society. OCLC 3640216.