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Eugène Burnouf PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF EUGÈNE BURNOUF “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Professor Eugène Burnouf “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1801 April 8, Wednesday: Eugène Burnouf was born in Paris. His father Professor Jean Louis Burnouf (1775-1844) was a classical scholar. In “An Act concerning slaves and servants,” New York prohibited slavetrading except when it amounted to transportation for crime (this would be re-enacted with amendments on March 31, 1817). “... And be it further enacted, That no slave shall hereafter be imported or brought into this State, unless the person importing or bringing such slave shall be coming into this State with intent to reside permanently therein and shall have resided without this State, and also have owned such slave at least during one year next preceding the importing or bringing in of such slave,” etc. A certificate, sworn to, must be obtained; any violation of this act or neglect to take out such certificate will result in freedom to the slave. Any sale or limited transfer of any person hereafter imported to be a public offence, under penalty of $250, and freedom to the slave transferred. The export of slaves or of any person freed by this act is forbidden, under penalty of $250 and freedom to the slave. Transportation for crime is permitted. LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1801 (edition of 1887), pages 547-52; LAWS OF NEW YORK, 1817 (edition of 1817), page 136. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Professor Eugène Burnouf “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1826 Eugène Burnouf and Christian Lassen collaborated in the writing of ESSAI SUR LE PALI .... HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1827 Eugène Burnouf’s OBSERVATIONS GRAMMATICALES SUR QUELQUES PASSAGES DE L’ESSAI SUR LE PALI. Having completed this work, he would turn next to the task of deciphering Avesta manuscripts that had been brought to France by Anquetil-Duperron. He would be the first scholar in Europe to master the Avestan language. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1829 From this year into 1843, Eugène Burnouf was causing the VENDIDAD SADE to be lithographed from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and publishing this in folio parts. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1832 Eugène Burnouf became a member of the Academie des Inscriptions, and professor of Sanskrit at the Collège de France. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1833 From this year into 1835, Professor Eugène Burnouf’s COMMENTAIRE SUR LE YAÇNA, L’UN DES LIVRES LITURGIQUES DES PARSES. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1836 Carsten Niebuhr had made, in 1778, copies of cuneiform inscriptions at Persepolis, and brought them to France, and at this point Professor Eugène Burnouf figured out the first of these inscriptions in Old Persian cuneiform. It amounted to a list of the satrapies of Darius I (Dariush the Great, 522-486 BCE, the most successful ruler of the Achaemenid dynasty and the most effective administrator of the Persian Empire). On the basis of this discovery he was able to construct, for the decipherment of the remainder of these inscriptions, an alphabet of thirty characters which has turned out to be almost entirely accurate. The 2d volume of Joseph-Héliodore-Sagesse-Vertu Garcin de Tassy’s LES ŒUVRES DE WALÎ, PUBLIÉES EN HINDOUSTANI. His MANUEL DE L’AUDITEUR DU COURS D’HINDOUSTANI, OU THÈMES GRADUÉS, ACCOMPAGNÉS D’UN VOCABULAIRE FRANÇAIS-HINDOUSTANI. Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a member of three of the five academies into which the Institute of France is divided. The Academy of Moral and Political Science owed its restoration to him, and in 1832 he had been one of its first associates. The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres had elected him in 1833 as the successor to M Dacier. In this year, therefore, he was chosen to be a member of the French Academy (Académie française). HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1837 Henry Rawlinson made a copy of inscriptions at Behistun in Persia that consisted of identical texts in the three official languages of the Persian empire (Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite), and had been carved during the reign of Darius I (Dariush the Great, 522-486 BCE, the most successful ruler of the Achaemenid dynasty and the most effective administrator of the Persian Empire). He was able to translate the opening paragraphs for the benefit of the Royal Asiatic Society. However, before he published this work he became acquainted with the recent discoveries made by Professor Eugène Burnouf, and recognized that he needed to reconsider some of this inferences. His work would not be published until 1847-1849. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1840 From this year into 1847 Professor Eugène Burnouf would be publishing, in three folio volumes, the Sanskrit text and a French translation of the BHAGAVATA PURANA OU HISTOIRE POÉTIQUE DE KRICHNA. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF 1843 April: In this month and the following one, two articles on Buddhist thought by Professor Eugène Burnouf were appearing in La Revue Indépendante, a prominent French journal which was presumably being stocked by Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody at her bookstore in downtown Boston. This month’s article was entitled Fragments des Prédications de Buddha. Professor Burnouf was the 1st to translate the LOTUS SUTRA from Sanskrit into a European language and eventually Henry Thoreau would possess a personal copy of the 1852 edition of his LE LOTUS DE LA BONNE LOI, TRADUIT DU SANSCRIT, ACCOMPAGNÉ D’UN COMMENTAIRE ET DE VINGT ET UN MÉMOIRES RELATIFS AU BUDDHISME, PAR M. E. BURNOUF (Paris: Imprimerie nationale). An English translation of this French translation of Chapter V of the Sanskrit of THE LOTUS SUTRA would appear in THE DIAL for January 1844, and presumably either Thoreau or Peabody, busy as beavers, prepared that translation — which would amount to the very 1st presentation of any part of this essential Buddhist scripture in the English language! THOREAU AND CHINA Thoreau edited this issue (Volume III, Number 4) of THE DIAL. THE DIAL, APRIL 1843 The issue carried 21 quotes in its “Ethnical Scriptures: Sayings of Confucius” section, but these are not the ones which Thoreau would (probably later in this same year) retranslate from the French of M.J. Pauthier’s CONFUCIUS ET MENCIUS. Thoreau was still relying upon English editions, at least three of which he had at this point perused, and the translation he was relying upon at this point was one made in 1809 by the Reverend Joshua J. Marshman.1 JOSHUA J. MARSHMAN Heaven speaks, but what language does it use to preach to men, that there is a sovereign principle from which all things depend; a sovereign principle which makes them act and move? Its motion is its language; it reduces the seasons to their time; it agitates nature, it makes it produce. This silence is eloquent. (ANALECTS or LUN-YÜ, one of THE FOUR BOOKS), Book XVII, Chapter 19) MENCIUS LIGHT FROM CHINA 1. We know he read the English translation by Father Couplet, a Jesuit in China from 1658 to 1680, which had been in 1687 the very first notice of the writings of Confucius for an European audience, in an 1835 edition, plus two by a Baptist missionary in India in 1809, the Reverend Joshua J. Marshman, and one done in 1828 by David Collie, a member of the London Missionary Society who was at one time the principal of the Protestant Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF PROFESSOR EUGÈNE BURNOUF Ethnical Scriptures. Sayings Of Confucius. 1. Chee says, if in the morning I hear about the right way, and in the evening die, I can be happy. 2. A man’s life is properly connected with virtue. The life of the evil man is preserved by mere good fortune. 3. Coarse rice for food, water to drink, and the bended arm for a pillow — happiness may be enjoyed even in these. Without virtue, riches and honor seem to me like a passing cloud. 4. A wise and good man was Hooi. A piece of bamboo was his dish, a cocoa-nut his cup, his dwelling a miserable shed. Men could not sustain the sight of his wretchedness; but Hooi did not change the serenity of his mind. A wise and good man was Hooi. 5. Chee-koong said, Were they discontented? The sage replies, They sought and obtained complete virtue;—how then could they be discontented? 6. Chee says, Yaou is the man who, in torn clothes or common apparel, sits with those dressed in furred robes without feeling shame. 7. To worship at a temple not your own is mere flattery. 8. Chee says, grieve not that men know not you; grieve that you are ignorant of men.
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