France Becomes a Center for Indian Studies

In 1787, Abbé Parraud retranslated Wilkins' English version [of the Bhagavad-Gita] into French. Within a short span of time, other brilliant translations of Sanskrit books from the Asiatic Society of Bengal became well known in revolutionary France. Louis Matthieu Langlès, curator of oriental manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale and its provisional specialist on India, documented Indic research. Langlès was well aware of the importance of the Asiatic Society. For the benefit of scholars everywhere, he included the history and bibliography of the early publications of the Society in the third volume of the Magasin Encyclopédique. (Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Discovery of India and the East, 1836--1886, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 55)

Beginning in 1800, France became a center for Indian studies when the accumulated Indian manuscripts languishing in the Bibliothèque Nationale began to be prepared for inventory. The Asiatic Researches: Transactions of the Society (published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal from 1788) (Ibid., 39) had been published in Calcutta in 1805 and were being translated into French along with the works of both Wilkins and Sir William Jones.

In 1832, a French translation of the Bhagavad-Gila was made directly from the Sanskrit by Jean-Denis Languinais and published posthumously. Languinais had written of the "great surprise" it was "to find among these fragments of an extremely ancient epic poem from India. . . a completely spiritual pantheism. . . and. . . the vision of all-in-God . . ."(Art, Culture and Spirituality: A Prabuddha Bharata Centenary Perspective (1896--1996), Swami Atmaramanananda and M. Sivaramakrishna, comps. and eds. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1997), 161)

By the late eighteenth century, French writers acquired intimate knowledge of Indian literature. Sensing that India possessed a great richness of spiritual unity, Henri Frédéric Amiel, a contemporary of Victor Hugo, saw the need of "Brahmanising souls" for the spiritual welfare of humanity. (Sisir Kumar Mitra, Vision of India, New Delhi: Crest Publishing House, 1984, 202)

The Significance of France in German Indology

France played a unique role in the advancement of Indic studies in Germany when Paris became the "capital of nascent Indology." Together with Wilkins, Jones and others, British Lieutenant Alexander Hamilton (an employee of the East India Company) was among the first twenty-four charter members of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (The Oriental Renaissance, 39) and played a very important role in the focus of Sanskrit studies in Germany.

While serving in the British Navy, Lt. Hamilton was sent to Paris to collate Sanskrit manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale for a new edition of Wilkins' translation of the Hitopadesha. Hamilton was the only one apart from Wilkins who knew Sanskrit and who lived in Europe at the time. In 1803, during the war between France and England, the orientalist Claude de Saint-Martin expressed his enthusiasm for "the numerous treasures that the literature of India is beginning to offer us," in his Le ministère de l'homme-esprit. (op. cit., 236). In the same year Hamilton became a paroled prisoner in Paris, but received special treatment due to his scholarly associations. Orientalist Constantine Volney was interested in Hamilton's work and protected Hamilton's right to continue cataloguing the manuscripts. (Ibid., 67). Hamilton expresses his gratitude by teaching Sanskrit to Volney and few others. Among them were the father of Eugène Burnouf (a Latin scholar), Louis Matthieu Langlés, Claude Fauriel---and Friedrich von Schlegel. Schlegel was in Paris at the time and began studying Sanskrit three hours a day with Hamilton (he continued to study it on his own for four years). Between 1803 and 1804, Friedrich von Schlegel used the Sanskrit he learned from Hamilton to translate excerpts from the Indian epics and the Laws of Manu. In 1804 he taught a private course on world literature in Paris and included Indian works. (Ibid., 67--70). His influence on his brother, August Wilhelm who surpassed him in Sanskrit, occurred at this time.

  Part 3 of this article. For other parts of this article, see How Vedanta Came to the West