Jaspan, M.A.

Mervyn Aubrey Jaspan was born in Johannesburg in 1926 and graduated with a degree in sociology and anthropology from Natal in 1948. Fieldwork undertaken in the following year on a Zulu-speaking tribe of South-Western Natal became his BSc thesis at Oxford in 1951. After a temporary post at Manchester and a research fellowship at Exeter he was appointed in 1955 to the chair of sociology at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. His papers in the Brynmor Jones Library date from this time.

In 1961 he was appointed research fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra after which he spent three years working on the Rejang of southern Sumatra based at Tapus in the highlands and Padang Bendar in the lowlands of Bengkulu. His thesis, `From patriliny to matriliny: structural change among the Redjang of Southwest Sumatra' was presented in 1964. In the same year he published four Rejang texts as Folk literature of South Sumatra: Redjang Ka-Ga-Nga texts and was appointed senior lecturer at the University of Western Australia in Perth. He became first director of the Centre for Asian Studies there. In 1966 he made a trip to Cambodia to study the Cham people of the middle Mekong and from 1967 began to collaborate with Dr Petrus Voorhoeve on the collection, transcription and translation of South Malay texts, especially those in rencong script.

In 1968 Mervyn Jaspan was appointed to the chair of South-East Asian Sociology at Hull University. He became director of the Centre for South-East Asian Studies founded six years before. There was rapid expansion in the 1960s with the considerable help of the then librarian, Philip Larkin, and the South-East Asia librarian, Brenda Moon. The library spent several years acquiring material through purchase and active pursuit of donations, many of which came from Professor Jaspan himself. Archival papers acquired have come from Dr David Bassett, F W Dalley, Dr Harry Parkin and Dr Roy Bruton (see separate Guide entries) whose research materials cover the English presence in Java in the seventeenth century, trade unions in Malaya and Singapore, the Toba Batak religion of North Sumatra and the education of the Chinese in Sarawak respectively. The library also purchased in 1971 the valuable collection of Professor C Hooykaas including books and periodicals and Indonesian novels. Concentration on Indonesian material has led to it comprising about 30 of the total South-East Asian holdings of the library and includes a microfilm copy of the Sumatra factory records for 1685-1825. At Professor Jaspan's urging these materials were given separate cataloguing and physical space in the main library and archives.

In 1969 Mervyn Jaspan made research trips to Malaysia, Sumatra and Cambodia and in 1970 he travelled to Burma. He worked largely on folk literature and indigenous medicine. He launched the Sumatra Research Bulletin in 1971. Mervyn Jaspan died in 1975 when his books were donated to the library. After his papers followed in 1980 and 1988 Dr Geoffrey Marrison, former Keeper in the Department of Oriental Books and Manuscripts at the British Library, compiled calendars of all the books and manuscripts now in the Brynmor Jones Library. Although funding dramatically declined through the 1980s, Mervyn Jaspan's research collections still lie at the centre of the best consolidated collection of South-East Asian books and manuscripts outside London. This totals some 35,000 items recently boosted by the acquisition of 15,000 items from the Indian High Commission.