The texts that make up this manuscript are Vedanta texts, philosophical interpretations of the ancient Hindu Vedas (holy books) written in Sanskrit. The first, Vedanta Paribhasa, is a work by the South Indian sixteenth century scholar Dharmarajah Dhvarindra which deals with Vedanta epistemology. The second, Vedanta Shikhamani, is a commentary on the first text by the author’s son Ramakrishna. These were transcribed on the loose paper gatherings in mid-18th century Benares (modern Varanasi), the centre of Hindu theology and teaching in India.

When presented to George III, the manuscript was wrongly described as a ‘copy of the Vedam, the sacred Book of the Brahmins […] obtained in Benares, their celebrated University, in 1776’. The donor was John Walsh (1726–95), a former secretary to Robert Clive who had become wealthy working for the East India Company. He had received the pages from his nephew, Francis Fowke, former East India Company Resident at Benares who had been involved in the Warren Hastings scandal.  Accompanying the gift of the manuscript, Walsh sent the King another text ‘a little tract never published concerning the several appointments of my nephew to Benares, and removals from thence, as it exhibits an Historic Drama in which our chief political agents in India are not only the characters, but by singular concurrence the writers of their own parts’

After the Sanskrit pages entered George III’s library his bookbinders in the Royal Bindery made a new box for the pages, preserving the nature of the unbound Sanskrit manuscript, rather than sewing the pages between new covers.