Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to contextualize François-Marie de Tours' grammar and dictionary of the "Lingua Mogolana" within the linguistic and intellectual efforts of the early modern French Capuchin missionaries scattered between Syria and South India.

Paper long abstract:

Recently it has become accepted by all historians that it was not with William Jones, but already in the sixteenth century that emerged a body of European orientalist knowledge of India. A category of "Catholic orientalism" has been proposed to characterize the intellectual endeavors promoted in India by missionaries depending from the Portuguese Padroado, the Pontifical Congregation de Propaganda Fide or sent by the French Crown. However, the "anglocentrism" of previous (anglophone) historians has often been replaced or complemented by a "Jesuitocentrism", namely the equation of the early modern Catholic missions to India with the very important Jesuit ones, and the assumption that only the Jesuits were able to develop a sophisticated understanding of the Indian languages, cultures and religions. On the contrary, the recent acknowledgement of François-Marie de Tours' central contribution to Hindustānī linguistics has demonstrated the fundamental intellectual relevance of the French Capuchin missionaries. This paper will show how Fr. François-Marie's accomplishments were based on a tradition of linguistic and orientalist studies undertaken since the early seventeenth century by his Capuchin confrères, particularly from the Province of Touraine along an axis stretching from Syria up to the Coromandel Coast. Particular attention will be paid to the intellectual context of the Capuchin mission in Surat, the very one where François-Marie's Hindustānī studies emerged. I will present unpublished manuscript texts composed by the French Capuchins, fragments of an intellectual tradition largely forgotten, primarily due to the dispersal of religious archives at the time of the French Revolution.