The indigenous sources of the Sanskrit grammars composed in India during the 17th-18th centuries by the Jesuit Fathers Roth, Pons and Hanxleden (Arnos Padiri)

Vielle, Christophe
(2023) Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit Distinguished Lecture Programme — Location: Kalady (16.February.2023)

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The importance of the Sanskrit language for the well understanding of the traditional Indian religion, already underlined by European Christian missionaries at the end of the 16th century, led in the 17th-18th centuries to the composition by three Jesuit Fathers, settled in three distant places of India, of three Sanskrit grammars inspired by different indigenous models. The rediscovery of the manuscripts of these grammars in European libraries during the last decades, and their subsequent respective critical editions and studies, constitute a major contribution to the progress of the historical and linguistic researches on the first European attempts of grammatical description (in Latin) of the Sanskrit language. The very first of these grammars (Grammatica linguae Sanscretanae Brachmanum) was written in Agra during the years 1654-1662, using Devanāgarī script, by the German Father Heinrich Roth (1620-1688). His work was based on Anubhūti Svarūpācārya’s Sārasvata-vyākaraṇa. A critical edition of this grammar, with a German translation of the Latin portions, is currently prepared by Johannes Schneider in Munich (a facsimile of the autograph manuscript preserved in Rome, BN, where it was retrieved in 1967, has already been published in 1988 by A. Camps & J.-C. Muller). The third of these grammars (Grammatica Sanskritica), was composed in Chandernagor during the years 1730-1734, using Bengali script, by the French Father Jean-François Pons (1688-1752). His work following, for its first part, the teaching of Vopadeva’s Mugdhabodha, and, for its second part (syntax) Kramadīśvara Saṃkṣiptasāra (Jaumara school), has been edited in Paris in 2020 by Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat, according, for the first part, to an autograph manuscript (where the other hand of a local pandit can also be seen), and, for the second part, to a later copy made in Pondicherry in which the Sanskrit was transcribed in Telugu and Roman scripts and the Latin portions were translated into French (these two manuscripts preserved in Paris, BNF, were described by Jean Filliozat in 1937). Finally, there is the Sanskrit grammar (Grammatica Grandonica) of the German Father Johann Ernst Hanxleden alias Arnos Padiri (1681-1732), composed in the Thrissur region of Kerala before 1732 (possibly during his stay in Velur in the years 1720-1726; thereafter preserved in the library of the Jesuit seminary of Ambhazakad before to reach Rome, BPF) and which was, later on, extensively used (plagiarised) by the Discalced Carmelite Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo (Paulinus Padiri, 1748-1806) for making his own Sidharubam seu Grammatica Samscrdamica, the first Sanskrit grammar ever printed (Rome, 1790). The autograph manuscript of Hanxleden, left by Paulinus in the monastery of Montecompatri (near Rome), was retrieved in 2010 by Toon Van Hal and edited in 2012 by the same and myself. This grammar, written in Grantha-Malayalam script, follows chiefly the Siddharūpa, which was the manual traditionally used in Kerala for learning basic Sanskrit, but it also interestingly relies on Dharmakīrti’s more elaborate Rūpāvatāra that was also used then in the native scholars’ Sanskrit cursus (corresponding to the longer vyākaraṇa manuscript once copied by Hanxleden), whereas for its chapter on the gender of the nouns it agrees with what is stated in the liṅgādisaṃgraha-varga of the Amarasiṃha (3,5) (a manuscript of which was also copied by the Father).
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Vielle, C. (2023). The indigenous sources of the Sanskrit grammars composed in India during the 17th-18th centuries by the Jesuit Fathers Roth, Pons and Hanxleden (Arnos Padiri). Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit Distinguished Lecture Programme, Kalady. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/266707