page_title: E. J. Rapson
section_title: The Cambridge History of India
hierarchical_section_title: E. J. Rapson / The Cambridge History of India
context_page_description: Edward James Rapson FBA was a British numismatist, philologist and professor of Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge. He was a fellow of St. John's College. Rapson died following a sudden collapse at dinner at St. John's.
context_section_description: Rapson edited the first volume of The Cambridge History of India, "Ancient India", where his expertise in coins was put to good use. The Times noted in their review of the volume that coin evidence provided some of the only sources for the earliest rulers mentioned, there being in many cases no surviving written sources. Rapson spent time on secondment from the College at the Department of Coins and Medals of the British Museum, where he was Assistant Keeper of Coins and Medals and was reckoned to have an uncanny ability to be able to identify ancient coins merely by feel.
  He was known for his scrupulous attention to detail and for checking not only his own references carefully, but the references of every other contributor. He also invariably agreed to help fellow scholars with their work. These factors, possibly combined with increasing age, meant that Volume II of the History, for which he was the editor, was incomplete at the time of his death in 1937. He had confided to colleagues that the slow pace of the work meant that large parts of it needed to be updated to include the latest scholarship. For all these reasons, and possibly the upcoming war too, it remained unpublished.
caption: Coin of the Western Satrap Bhumaka, 2nd century CE, from Rapson's "Indian coins in the British Museum", 1908
exif: {}