I have the pleasure to inform
you about the recent publication of Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat's new
book:
À l'origine des études sanskrites: La Grammatica Sanscritica
de Jean-François Pons S.J.. Étude, édition et traduction par Pierre-Sylvain
Filliozat, Paris, Mémoires de l'Académie
des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres vol. 56, 2020, 226 pp.
Three Sanskrit grammars were composed by Jesuits in India
during the the 17th-18th centuries.
(an edition is still expected).
The second one,
entitled Grammatica Grandonica, was composed by Father
Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681-1732,
Kerala), in Latin and Malayalam script for Sanskrit, based on the Siddharūpa and (a cursory
reading of) Dharmakīrti's Rūpāvatāra (H's grammar was
later on plagiarized by Paulinus in his Sidharubam,
1790). The edition of the autograph manuscript was made by T. Van Hal
and myself in 2013: urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-63218 (an additional French translation and grammatical
commentary, nearly completed, is due to appear). The third one, entitled Grammatica Sanscritica, now published, was
composed by Father Jean-François Pons
(1698-1752, Chandernagor), in
1730-32 for its first 5 chapters/first part based on Vopadeva’s Mugdhabodha, in Latin and Bengali script (autograph ms.), and then
for its 6th chapter/last part (syntaxe) based on Kramadīśvara's Saṃkṣiptasāra, in French and
Roman transcription of the Sanskrit (with some use of Telugu-Kannada
script in the beginning; the preserved ms. of this part is a copy) (P's grammar was later on used by
A.H. Anquetil Duperron, who translated the French part in Latin).
Filliozat's
achievement is remarkable. After a general introduction on the 17th-18th
centuries Jesuit missionary work on Indian languages and civilization
(pp. 9-24), a chapter is devoted to the figure of Jean-François Pons
(pp. 25-47), another to the edition of his letters (pp. 49-80; of five,
the last, longest one, on Brahmin knowledge had been previously published as one of the Lettres édifiantes); there follows the introduction to the manuscripts
and the indigenous grammatical sources of the author (pp. 81-95), then
the annotated edition of the two parts (with a French translation of the
Latin text) (pp. 97-197), and finally the color-facsimile of the two
manuscripts (pp. 199-282). A bibliography and index are given at the
end. A few extracts of the book are provided here:
On the early history
of Indology, note also the volume on
Le sanctuaire dévoilé: Antoine-Léonard Chézy et
les débuts des études sanskrites en Europe, 1800-1850, éd. Jérôme Petit & Pascale
Rabault-Feuerhahn, Paris: BnF - Geuthner, 2019, 458 pp.
No ToC but see the programme of the
2015 Conference of which it is the Proceedings + paper-abstracts here:
Best
wishes