“… the Indian civilization is one of the great achievements of humanity. Less old than Egypt or Mesopotamia, it plunges not less through its origins into pre-history and, while the former are dead since long, Indian civilization remains alive even today. This exceptional survival has not been without evolution and renewal, but it has brought to us, through a continuous tradition, an infinitely greater mass of ancient texts than what remains to us of the old Greek, Latin and Chinese literatures.”
From: L’Inde Classique, vol. I, Foreword by Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat.
Materials for the study of Classical India – through materials to L’Inde Classique vols. I and II by Louis Renou, Jean Filliozat et al., Paris 1949-1953.
More precisely, the authors and general editors of vols. I and II are:
Louis Renou (1896-1966)
Jean Filliozat (1906-1982)
In addition, contributing authors in vol. I are :
Pierre Meile (1911-1963)
Anne-Marie Esnoul (1908-1996)
Liliane Silburn (1908-1993)
And contributing authors in vol. II :
Paul Demiéville (1894-1979)
Olivier Lacombe (1904-2001)
Pierre Meile (1911-1963)
As Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat point out in their Foreword, the authors and contributing authors are all students of Sylvain Lévi (1863-1935) or have followed his courses: “Belonging to different generations, the authors feel themselves to be the pupils of Sylvain Lévi and the tributaries of his thought.”
L’Inde Classique, Manuel des études indiennes, Tome premier. Reprint, Jean Maisonneuve, 11 rue Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1985.
This site provides materials for the study of Classical India, by providing tables of contents, indices, additions, supplements, occasional translations of brief, crucial passages, and further discussions and bibliographical references and updates to the chapters and sections of L’Inde Classique — manuel des études indiennes, vols. I and II, by Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat et al., published in 1949-1953. References to ancient and modern scholars are both rare and succinct in these two volumes, as it was the plan to give extensive bibliographical references in a third volume, which, unfortunately, never appeared. As the author-editors wrote in their Foreword in the first Volume:
“When it seemed necessary to refer to a particular opinion, either to accept it or to reject it, only the name of the author is given. Specialists will know which work is alluded to, and students will find useful details in the very rich bibliography which will be given at the end of the work.
The MANUAL will consist of three volumes of similar dimensions.”
Then current publications which are referred to in volumes I and II are only indicated through the name of the author: for instance, in paragraph 565 which deals with one of the Vedic texts, the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa, mention is made of “CALAND” which refers to The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa in the Kāṇviya recension edited for the first time (3 vols., Lahore, 1926-1939) by Willem Caland.
L’Inde classique, vol. I, first (now antiquarian) edition 1949
L’Inde classique, vol. II, first (now antiquarian) edition, 1953
When L’Inde classique, vol. I, appeared in 1949, it was, as a comprehensive manual for classical Indian studies or Indology, unprecedented and innovative. Louis Renou and Jean Filliozat mention in their Foreword as predecessors first of all the work of Christian Lassen, which they judge “epoch-making” (“qui a fait époque”), but still reflecting “in some of its parts the heroic times of Indian philology”: Indische Altertumskunde, which appeared in Bonn in four volumes between 1847 and 1861. They also mention the series “Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde, conceived on an infinitely larger plan than ours” which, however, had not yet fulfilled its original plan and was hence, sixty years after it started, still unfinished. Renou and Filliozat also note that the Grundriss “leaves aside, not without arbitrariness, the Dravidian facts.” To take these “Dravidian facts” into account throughout their work was one of their major innovations.
On the other hand, between the printing of the first pages of volume 1 in 1947 and the publication of the complete first volume in 1949, Renou and Filliozat are aware that the work is already outdated in some respects. Hence they write, in their “Additional Remarks” at the end of the volume:
Since the printing of the first sheets (the work was to appear in 1947, as the title page indicates), the important political change constituted by the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan today (1949) necessitates some alterations to the first chapter, Le Milieu Géographique:
p. 22 § 6. Instead of: At the present time, this country is named, officially … read: Under British rule, the name was …
Further below, after: Hind also means the whole, add: and was adopted as a national name by the Indian Union.
p. 42 § 50. Instead of: The English occupy India, read … occupied …”