indiendatum

Indiendatum is a term occasionally encountered in archival descriptions and historical databases to indicate the date associated with material pertaining to India. It is not a standard term in major archival schemas, but appears in certain Dutch- and German-language collections and digitization projects as a shorthand note in the dating of an item where the primary relevance is Indian.

Etymology and scope

The word combines the element Indien- (India) with Datum (date) in Germanic-language usage. In archives that use Germanic or Dutch conventions, indiendatum is used to flag or annotate dating information that specifically concerns Indian subjects, events, or provenance, rather than the document’s publication date alone.

Usage and interpretation

Indiendatum may specify the date of an event described in the item, the date of origin of the document, or the period the Indian subject matter covers. Because it is not standardized, the field can be ambiguous and may overlap with other date conventions such as “date of event,” “publication date,” or “date range.” Catalogers using indiendatum typically supplement the note with explicit context in the finding aid or in a separate date field to avoid misinterpretation.

Examples

A letter from 1857 related to India might carry indiendatum: 1857-07-12. A map documenting Indian territories could bear indiendatum: 1905. These examples illustrate how indiendatum functions as a subject-related dating cue rather than a universal bibliographic date.

Limitations

The lack of standardization means indiendatum is unevenly adopted and may vary between archives. Researchers should consult the cataloging notes to understand how the date is applied in a given collection.

See also

Date (archival term), Event date, ISAD(G), Archival description, Provenance.