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Category: Devanagari

Sanscrit 814, title page, in Foucaux's hand. Courtesy of the BnF.

Lakṣmīdevī’s “intellectual petticoats” and the flamewar they inspired

When the English East India Company seized large swathes of the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century, they were forced to transform from “merchants” into administrators. They needed a new army of English civil servants, not only to deal with the considerable revenue that was being generated, but also to...

Plaque en hommage à Ph. Ed. Foucaux. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Philippe-Édouard Foucaux in the margins

Philippe-Édouard Foucaux had a habit of coming in second place. Although he is described as the “first teacher of Tibetan in the Western world”, the way in which that “first” is qualified belies the fact that he was not the first Westerner to master the Tibetan language. That achievement is...