LAUSR

Abstract This article presents and analyses two previously unknown sources on Raja Krishnachandra of Nadia (1710–83). While the raja has long been famed in Bengal as a patron of brahmans, scholarship on him has had to contend with a lack of evidence. The two new sources, reports of conversations between Krishnachandra and Europeans, furnish insights into his mind and milieu. They support recent arguments that he used brahmanical patronage to buttress his authority, and deception to deal with the ascendant East India Company. Their greatest contribution, however, is to reveal that the raja sought an active engagement with foreign intellectual traditions. They suggest that eighteenth-century Hindu learning, far from being inherently hidebound or insular, was amenable to outside influences.