Les savants occidentaux, lecteurs et (re)copistes des manuscrits orientaux : Eugène Burnouf, Léon Feer, Julien Vinson

Jérôme Petit (1, 2)

1 BnF_MSS - Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits
2 Mondes Iranien et Indien - UMR 7528

Based on the work of three French orientalists, this article attempts at showing the reasons why philologists used to copy Indian manuscripts, what were the forms that could take these copies and for what purposes. The preparation of an edition or a translation of a particular text is probably the primary reason, but it is not the only one. Throughout the nineteenth century, access to sources is a key issue at a time when it was not so easy to travel to India and when scholars often had to use only the resources kept in European libraries or had to be in contact with suppliers based in India. The act of copying manuscripts was also a way to build up a corpus of texts, while the publication of editions with original typefaces was in its infancy.

Mots clés: Manuscrits indiens; histoire de l'orientalisme

Domaines: Héritage culturel et muséologie

Jérôme Petit. Les savants occidentaux, lecteurs et (re)copistes des manuscrits orientaux : Eugène Burnouf, Léon Feer, Julien Vinson. Eurasian studies, 2014, Lecteurs et copistes dans les traditions manuscrites iraniennes, indiennes et centrasiatiques, XII, pp.437-459. ⟨hal-01130822⟩