[INDOLOGY] Texts and bodily metaphors

[Will Sweetman]

Thanks, all, for your comments.

Christophe — I think Fenicio mentions the term Veda only in relation to a
Vedic mantra recited while consuming panchagavya (I think - I have only my
notes on Charpentier's edition (does anyone have a pdf?), which in any case
according to Paolo Aranha omits a large part of the original ms). But Ludo
Rocher argues (*Puranas*, 1986: 11) that Fenicio's primary sources were
puranic, and that this is even made explicit in the title of a Latin
translation of Fenicio: *Collectio omnium dogmatum & arcanorum ex Puranis
seu libris Canonicis paganorum Indianorum*...

Part of my argument in the article I'm preparing is that despite many
references to the Vedas as the most authoritative Indian sacred texts,
other texts were almost invariably the actual source. Azevedo, for
instance, having mentioned the Vedas as the original texts then goes on to
cite exclusively Tamil sources (*Tirumantiram*, *Tiruvācakam*, *Tivākaram*,
*Tirukkuṟaḷ* and another Tamil text on caste).

Thanks also for the references to the texts acquired by the Jesuits (stolen
on their behalf by a convert, it appears) in the 1550s. On the basis of
fragments of translations of these done by the convert (a Brahmin baptised
as Manuel Olivera) which were sent to Europe and are extant in Portugal and
Goa, Ines Zupanov and Angela Barreto Xavier have identified these as
Jñāneśvara’s Marathi version of Bhagavad-Gītā, a purana by Nāmdev, and
parts of the Mahābhārata.  Also in Portugal are three manuscripts
containing parts of the Mahābhārata and Rāmayāṇa in Konkani prose and
Marathi verse, transliterated into Roman script by Jesuits around the same
period. I think there is likely some connection here, but I'm not aware of
anyone who's explored it.

Best wishes

Will


On 12 August 2015 at 20:25, Christophe Vielle <
christophe.vielle at uclouvain.be> wrote:

> Thank you for this reference (with Geredão rendering grantha).
>
> So (I have not here the book at hand), nothing on the Vedas in J.
> Fenicio's work (1609? He arrived in India in 1584) ? (cf. *The Livro da
> Seita dos Indios Orientais (Brit. Mus. MS. Sloane 1820) of Father Jacobo
> Fenicio , s.j.*, edited with and introduction and notes by Jarl
> Charpentier, Uppsala : Almqvist & Wiksells, 1933, Arbeten utgivna med
> undestöd av Vilhelm Ekmans Universitetsfond 40).
>
> Note that the (Bhagavad-)Gîtâ (with the Avadhûta-Gîtâ) is already
> presented and discussed as the most sacred book of the brahmins in a Jesuit
> letter of 1560.
> See https://books.google.be/books?id=qP87AAAAcAAJ
> pp. 376 sq. ("Guitaa & Detatriaa") (cf. Charpentier p. xliv)
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Christophe Vielle
>
> Le 11 août 2015 à 02:03, Will Sweetman <will.sweetman at GMAIL.COM> a écrit :
>
> Dear all
>
> I'm working on some early European accounts of the Vedas including what I
> think is the very first reference to the Vedas in a European text. This was
> published in Couto's *Da Asia,* but is in fact taken from another work
> written by an Augustinian friar Agostinho de Azevedo in 1603. Azevedo (in
> my translation) says that the Brahmins:
>
> "have many books in their Latin, which they call Geredão which contain
> everything they are to believe, and all the ceremonies they are to perform.
> These books are divided into bodies [corpos], limbs [membros] and joints
> [articulos], whose originals are those they call Veados, which are divided
> into four parts, and these further into fifty-two parts in the following
> manner: six which they call Xastra, which are the bodies, eighteen which
> they call Purana, which are the limbs, twenty-eight called Agamon which are
> the joints."
>
> This formulation, with variations, is repeated in many subsequent European
> sources. The terms for the divisions (corpos,membros, articulos), which are
> not so often repeated, have usually been translated more literally as
> bodies, members and articles (or articulations).
>
> I'm curious as to whether anyone is aware of an Indian source which uses
> these metaphors. I'm aware, of course of the Vedāṇgas, but I think the six
> here are clearly meant to be the śāstras/darśanas. This may indicate some
> muddling—or sheer invention—on Azevedo's part, but in other instances I've
> found it best to look first for an Indian source or idea an early European
> writer may be following rather than immediately assuming error or
> invention, so I'd welcome any leads and/or comments on translating membros
> as limbs and articulos as joints. "Articles" for the latter seems to me to
> be a particularly unilluminating translation.
>
> Best
>
> Will
>
>
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> –––––––––––––––––––
> Christophe Vielle <http://www.uclouvain.be/christophe.vielle>
> Louvain-la-Neuve
>
>


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