M.F. Littré. 1823. “Sur la Chrestomathie sanskrite de M. Frank.” Journal asiatique. July 1823. pp. 51–56.
Here Littré reviews the Sanskrit chrestomathy of Othmar Frank (1770–1840), published in 1820 and entitled Chrestomathia sanskrita, quam ex codicibus manuscriptis, adhuc ineditis, Londini exscripsit, atque in usum tironum versione exposuit, tabulis grammaticis, etc., illustravit et edidit. This was a useful work, with selections from the Mahābhārata and from the works of Śaṅkara, printed in devanāgarī with romanizations and commentary on the texts.
This gives Littré occasion to discuss the various processes for printing books with devanāgarī:
| Les caractères dévanagari ne sont pas moins rares en Allemagne qu’en France. M. Bopp, qui a donné en 1818, l’épisode de Nala, autre pièce tirée du Mahabharata, a fait imprimer son livre à Londres, avec les beaux caractères de Charles Wilkins, l’un des hommes qui, de nos jours, ont le mieux mérité de la littérature sanskrit; le petit nombre de mots sanskrits, employés par M. de Schlegel, dans sa Bibliothèque Indienne, proviennent d’un caractère qu’il a fait graver à Paris, chez M. Lions. Pour M. Frank, il a été obligé d’écrire lui-même tous ses caractères dévanagari dans des espaces ménagés, sur la feuille où il avait fait imprimer toutes les parties de son travail qui sont écrites en caractères romains, et de les lithographier ensuite. Il ne lui a pas fallu moins de cinquante-neuf pierres pour lithographier tout l’ouvrage, et c’est certainement ce travail long, difficile et dispendieux, qui le tient au prix élevé auquel il se vend. |
The devanāgarī fonts are no less rare in Germany than in France. Mr. Bopp, who published in 1818 the episode of Nala, another piece taken from the Mahābhārata, had his book printed in London, with the beautiful fonts of Charles Wilkins, one of the most well-learned men in Sanskrit literature of our time. The small number of Sanskrit words used by Mr. de Schlegel in his Bibliothèque Indienne come from a font which he had struck in Paris, by Mr. Lions. As for Mr. Frank, he had to write all his devanāgarī characters himself in blank spaces on the page where he had to print all the parts of his work which were written in Roman characters, and then he had to lithograph them afterwards. He needed no less than 59 stones to lithograph the entire work, and it is certainly this long, difficult, and expensive work that contriuted to the high price at which it sells. |
Littré then notes that Bopp and Frank were both sent by the Bavarian government to Paris and London to train themselves in Indian literature, and to bring their knowledge back to their homeland. In London, Frank had met Mr. Ekenstam, a Swedish scholar on a similar mission. Littré praises the productivity of the German scholars, who have published useful editions of texts and comparative grammars. He then complains about the situation of Sanskrit studies in France, despite the nation’s great collections:
| En France, quoique nous possédions une foule de manuscrits sanskrites, et malgré la zèle des savans recommandables qui se sont occupés de la littérature indienne, nous paraissons moins avancés. La bibliothèque royale renferme le Mahabharata en entier; elle en possède en outre plusieurs parties séparées, et, entre autres, deux copies du Bhagavat-gita. Il suffit de jeter les yeux sur le catalogue dressé en 1807 par M. Hamilton, et traduit par M. Langlès, pour voir que les ouvrages les plus importans de la littérature indienne sont à Paris, et que cette capitale est après Londres la ville d’Europe qui offre à exploiter la mine la plus riche. |
In France, although we possess a wealth of Sanskrit manuscripts, and in spite of the zeal of the commendable scholars who occupy themselves with Indian literature, we appear less advanced. The Royal Library has the entire Mahābhārata; it also has many other separate parts of it and, among others, two copies of the Bhagavadgītā. One only has to glance at the catalog made by Mr. Hamilton in 1807, and translated by Mr. Langlès, to see that the most important works of Indian literature are in Paris, and that this capital is, after London, the European city which has the richest mine to be exploited. |
Despite the royally established chair of Sanskrit at the Collège de France, despite the prestigious Société Asiatique, the French still have no Sanskrit grammar, and no primers for the beginner in the language.
Littré finishes with his favorable review of Frank’s chrestomathy, praising in particular his ability to pique our curiosity about the philosophical writings of Śaṅkara. But one gets the sense that the real purpose of the review was to inspire the French to work harder to compete against their German and British colleagues.
1: Littré here refers to a catalog jointly authored by Langlès and Hamilton in 1807, entitled Catalogue des manuscrits samskrits de la Bibliothêque impériale avec des notices du contenu de la plupart des ouvrages. ↩
