Objectives
Corpus
(1) BnF Sanskrit and Tamil manuscripts.
The BnF collection is the heir of the “Bibliothèque du roi” (Petit 2014: 438n4), in which Indian manuscripts entered as early as the 17th c.
The BnF Tamil manuscripts number 652, among which 107 are multiple-text manuscripts, for a total of 1140 different texts – not works, as several works exist in several copies. This is a unique collection of Tamil manuscripts. It has no equal in size and diversity except in South Asia. Unlike most European collections, that go back to the efforts of missionaries or other non-specialists of the Tamil literary traditions, the holdings of the BnF include many significant texts of Tamil literature, and especially its collection of Tamil grammatical and lexicographical works deserves to be called unique. What makes it even more important is the fact that in the humid climate of South India palm-leaf does not last long without proper care and for a number of texts the BnF copies are among the oldest surviving witnesses (there are more than 150 mss. of the 18th c.).
The extant catalogue for Tamil manuscripts (Cabaton 1912) is very basic and incomplete (Indien 1–578; there is an annotated copy with supplementary descriptions of further Tamil manuscripts). We find more detailed descriptions in Vinson’s proofreadings of his unpublished catalogue (1867, up to Indien 204), in his handwritten handlist (2 vols. = Indien 1061–1062), and in annotated proofreadings of Vinson’s catalogue supplemented by handwritten descriptions by Léon Feer (Indien 577).
The collection of Sanskrit manuscripts at the BnF consist in 1878 mss. (see BAM, the BnF online database on archives and manuscripts and the presentation of the collection, with the list of printed and mss. catalogues). We have brief descriptions by Cabaton (1907, up to Sanscrit 1141; with handwritten descriptions up to Sanscrit 1875). For a part of it only do we have elaborate descriptions in print (Filliozat 1941 & 1970, up to Sanscrit 452, that is Vedic, Buddhist, and Epic texts) and on the BnF web-portal (that is Jaina mss. of the Senart collection) as well as studies on specific parts of the collection (Filliozat 1934a, 1934b, 1936). However, a number of smaller personal collections have not yet received much attention and as such will be added to the corpus under scrutiny.
(2) Stabi, Hamburg, Sanskrit and Tamil manuscripts.
The Stabi in Hamburg owns a collection of around 500 Indian manuscripts mostly on palm-leaf (rather than paper) and in Sanskrit, part of which were donated by K. L. Janert, G. Oppert and O. Schrader. Besides Sanskrit mss. there are also a few manuscripts in Tamil and Telugu. An important characteristic of this collection is that its provenance is mostly South Indian, that is, the same region as the Tamil manuscripts, often produced in the same institutions and clearly sharing a tradition of colophon writing (Franceschini & Ciotti 2016). At present there exists only a basic handwritten handlist made by V. Raghavan of the 205 boxes of the collection. A portion only (a little more than 250 manuscripts) is covered by VOHD (Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland) in vols. II.4–9 (see Janert 1982, 1991), but the descriptions are very rudimentary. More entries are expected in vol. II.14 (Tamil manuscripts, under preparation). Three manuscripts have been described by Francis (2011). As for the manuscripts from Janert (6 boxes, containing at least 27 items), they have yet to be examined.
The Paris Tamil collection of more than 600 mss. is remarkable for several reasons. It contains samples from the majority of the important literary and scientific traditions of premodern Tamil. It is not strong on early classical literature (which was for the most part not yet re-discovered at the time the collection was made), but approximately 30 specimens from this domain will be taken into account completely, since one of the goals of NETamil was to make a complete survey of the surviving material. The collection of grammatical and lexicographical literature (about 40 mss.), as already mentioned, is the treasure of the collection, unique in Europe and invaluable for researchers all the more since it contains a number of the earliest surviving copies. It also falls within the scope of the NETamil project and will, therefore, be completely catalogued. Its paratexts will be studied and a number of copies will be included in ongoing works of critical edition. The BnF has good samples of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava devotional and theological literature (about 50 and 60 mss., respectively), but the majority of texts also survives in multiple Indian copies. Here choices will be made based on the presence of paratexts and on the interests of the team. For the later pre-modern literature again we find a number of treasures, such as some of the later Kāvya texts and Śaiva Purāṇas. Here an attempt will be made, on the one hand, to cover the texts that ought to be critically re-edited and, one the other hand, to include samples from as many sub-genres as can be identified. Another forte of the collection is its share of missionary and early Indological documents connected with the analysis of the Tamil language and the exploration of its domains of knowledge, as well as some administrative documents (altogether some 110 mss.), all relevant for colonial history, cultural history and history of linguistics, focal points of the CEIAS and HTL CNRS teams. The numerous papers of Ariel (Rosny 1866) will also allow us to better understand how the collection itself made its way into the BnF. Finally, sciences such as medicine and astrology are covered by the collection (about 50 mss.), but here expertise is very thin on the ground, and the extended team cannot hope to do more than some spot checks. The same is true for the final category, labelled as “Others,” which comprises some 50 mss. of later sectarian traditions, miscellanea and unidentified and fragmentary material.
Several corpora from areas other than South India will also require careful examination, as they offer important parallels which have not been fully investigated yet, and which will be of particular interest to our project on Tamil mss. The Burnouf collection comprises 218 mss. (Petit 2014: 438) dispersed among Acc. Nos. “Indien” and is only in part (125 mss.) covered by Filliozat (1941 & 1970): it leaves thus 93 mss. to be investigated. The Burnouf collection also comprises precious early printed editions (Sanscrit 1046–1102), among which are also found Tamil texts (Sanscrit 1130–1140). These provide early print sources about the adaptation of paratexts from the manuscript to the print culture. The Senart collection (Filliozat 1936; Petit 2009) of 304 mss. (Sanscrit 1444–1748) consists mostly of mss. written on Indian paper between the 15th and 19th c. The majority is Jaina, besides 30 Brahmanical and 10 Buddhist works (Petit 2009: 177; Balbir 2017a). N. Balbir and J. Petit have started enriching the online descriptions of the Jaina mss. covering so far 100 mss. (see for instance “Sanscrit 1539”), for which improvements are still to be made (survey of incipits, explicits, and colophons; notes and bibliography). Other Jaina mss. are to be found in the Anquetil-Duperron, Ochoa, and Foucher collections. Of particular interest also are 45 mss. from Kashmir (Foucher, Stein) and a group of palm-leaf mss. from Bengal sent in the 1730s by the Jesuit Father Jean-François Pons, especially remarkable for its large number of Sanskrit works in the fields of Dialectics (Nyāya) and Systematics or Natural Philosophy (Vaiśeṣika) (47 mss.).
The Hamburg collection of about 500 mss. is an interesting counterpart in that it covers more or less the same geographic range (the very South of India) but has put much less emphasis on the local literary language, Tamil, only represented by some 20 mss., which will be taken up completely. An equally small number of mss. relates to other regional languages such as Telugu, while the vast majority covers specimens from a wide range of Sanskrit literary, religious and scientific traditions. One reason why Sanskritists have so far neglected the collection is that manuscripts in South India as a rule do not endure for a very long time, and so it was not expected to find especially old or text-critically relevant copies in Hamburg. But for broader studies of transmission history in a wider sense — for example on local libraries, producers such as scribes and copyists, scholarly networks and manuscript users — such a collection may be of great relevance. In this regard the goal is, on the one hand, to give a fresh impulse to the stagnating work of the VOHD and continue the process of identification and description begun by V. Raghavan in order to find paratexts and extend the database of South-Indian colophons started by the team members Ciotti and Franceschini. In addition, the project will, in accordance with the strength of the team, predominantly focus on philosophy/theology, grammar and poetics.