La civilisation la plus antique: Voltaire's images of India

Journal of World History

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 173-185

  Mohan, Jyoti ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL INFLUENCE; DOCUMENTARY SOURCE; IMAGE; RELIGION;

ASIA; EURASIA; INDIA; SOUTH ASIA;

EID: 27944479046     PISSN: 10456007     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Alex Aronson, Europe Looks at India: A Study in Cultural Relations (Calcutta, 1979), p. 22.
2. For an exhaustive list of the books in Voltaire's library relating to India, look up D. S. Hawley, "L'Inde de Voltaire," Studies on Voltaire and the 18th century CXX (1974).
3. Voltaire, Oeuvres Completes de Voltaire: Annales de l'Empire: Fragments sur quelques révolutions dans l'Inde and sur le mort du Comte de Lalli, vol. 24 (Paris: Imprémerie de la Société Littéraire, 1785-89) (henceforth Oeuvres).
4. Theodore Besterman, ed., Voltaire's Correspondence, corr. 13663 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964).
5. For example, Zadig et la destinée (1747), Lettres d'un Turc sur les Fakirs et sur son ami Bababec (1750), Histoire d'un bon brahmin (1761), Le blanc et le noir (1764), Aventure indienne traduite par l'ignorant (1766), La Princesse de Babylone (1768), and Le Taureau blanc (1774).
6. See François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, trans. Archibald Constable (1968);
7. Jean-Baptiste Bernier and John Zephaniah Holwell, Interesting Historical Events Relative to the Province of Bengal and the Empire of Industan, Vol. 2 (1767);
8. Nathaniel Halhed, A code of Gentoo Laws, or Ordinations of the Pundits (1776);
9. and Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan (1768).
10. From "The Ignorant Philosopher," The Works of Voltaire, Vol. 18, part 2 (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1968; and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), p. 277 (henceforth Works)
11. Works, Vol. 24, p. 479.
12. Ludo Rocher has written an excellent monograph on the origins, possible authorship, and various recensions of the Ezour Vedam. See Ludo Rocher, Ezourvedam. A French Veda of the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1984).
13. The first French version of the Ezour Vedam appeared in 1778. Voltaire was presented with a copy by a French official in Pondichéry, a Chevalier de Mondave. The text was supposed to be a translation of an original Veda, made by the missionary Roberto de Nobili, although this was later proven false. Voltaire donated his copy to the Bibliothèque Royale in Paris.
14. From "The Ignorant Philosopher," Works, vol. 18, part 21 p. 227.
15. "Ancient and Modern History," Works, vol. 13, part 1, p. 179.
16. Many of these texts, which were "discovered" by Orientalist scholars and sent back to Europe during the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be translated by French and British scholars, were later discovered to be fakes. In fact, Voltaire's primary source about Indian religion and philosophy, the Ezour Vedam, which he described as one of the major theological texts of the Hindus (probably confusing it with the Yajur Vedam) was discovered to be a much later work of dubious quality and questionable authorship.
17. The use of adjectives such as "effeminacy" and "lassitude" was commonly applied to Oriental peoples in the eighteenth century, but in the case of India, these took on a new meaning when the British defined certain sections of the Indian people in these terms in the nineteenth century and later, in order to justify the mechanisms of imperial rule. For an interesting example of this and how it was worked into the rubrics of governance, see Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate Bengali' in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).
18. "Ancient and Modern History," pp. 42-43.
19. Works, Vol. 15, part 2, p. 180.
20. Works, Vol. 13, part 1, p. 39.
21. Voltaire, "Dialogue entre un brachmane et un Jésuite sur la nécessité et l'enchaînment des choses," in Mélanges (Paris, 1961)
22. Works, Vol. 15, part 2, p. 190.
23. Ibid., p. 175.
24. Ibid., pp. 180-183.
25. This challenge to the Church was to become a consistent feature of French writings on India, albeit not a very influential school of thought. The nineteenth-century French colonial administrator and prolific writer Louis Jacolliot wrote several books on the originality of Hinduism and the derivation of Christianity from India. Some of his wider works on this topic include Christna et le Christ (Paris: A. Lacroix et cie, 1874)
26. and The Bible in India: Hindoo Origin of Hebrew and Christian Revelation (New York: Carleton, 1870). In the twentieth century, the idea that Christianity was derived from Hinduism was made visible by the members of the Theosophical Society, who initially focused on religion but were to be better known in history for their efforts at social reform in India.
27. Besterman, Vol. 105, letter no. 17249.
28. Ibid., nos. 8370 and 13548.
29. Ibid., no. 113702.
30. Ibid., nos. 12405, 12763, 18677, and 18756.
31. Many writers have commented upon this aspect of Voltaire's writing on India, including Rocher, D. S. Hawley, and Sylvia Murr, "Les conditions d'émergence du discours sur l'Inde su siècle des Lumières, Inde et Littératures," Purusartha 7 (1983).
32. Oeuvres, Vol. 19. The actual quotation reads "Parmi tant d'opinions extravagantes, et de superstitions bizarres, croinons-nous que tous ces païens des Indes reconaissant comme nous un Être infiniment parfait? Qu'ils l'appellent l'Être des êres, l'Être souverain, invisible, incomprehensible, sans figure, créateur et conservateur, juste et miséricordieux, qui se plaât à se communiquer aux hommes pour les conduire au bonheur éternal? Ces idées sont contenues dans le Veidam, ce livre des anciens brachmanes, et encore mieux dans le Shasta, plus ancien que le Veidam. Elles sont répandues dans les écrits modernes des bramins" (p. 415).
33. Quoted in Peter Marshall, ed., The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 33.
34. Oeuvres, vol. 19, p. 413.
35. Ibid.