À l’origine des études sanskrites : la Grammatica Sanskritica de Jean-François Pons S.J.

Abstract

The article “At the origin of Sanskrit studies: the Grammatica Sanskritica of Jean-François Pons S.J.” is a critical review of the edition of this grammar by Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat (2020), to which work it provides a series of additions, in particular on the two other Jesuit grammars of Sanskrit prior to this one; on the engineer Deidier, Pons’s companion (who initiated the collecting of Sanskrit manuscripts) and correspondent, and possible author of La gentilité du Bengala (fn. 14); on the scholarly letters of Pons, and the important supplement to his 1740 account of the philosophies of India found in his 1732-33 catalogue of manuscripts; on Father Coeurdoux as the translator of the second part of Pons’s grammar into French (with an argument related to the transcription of Sanskrit, developed in fn. 38); and, finally, on the genesis of the fragmented composition of this grammar and the more precise chronology that it is possible to establish for it within the years 1729-39.