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Pioneering work on Indian languages and society by an "unjustly forgotten" Indologist

VESDIN (VEZDIN), Filip (PAULINUS A SANCTO BARTHOLOMAEO).
Viaggio alle Indie Orientali umiliato alla Santita di N. S. Papa Pio Sesto pontefice massimo ...
Rome, Antonio Fulgoni, 1796. 4to. With 12 engraved illustration plates (6 with 2 illustrations each to make 18 in total), engraved roundel portraits of Pope Pius VI (on the title-page) and the author (above the opening of the main text) and some small woodcut illustrations of "Indian hieroglyphs". Set in roman and italic types with occasional words in Greek, Arabic, East Syriac, Devanagari and more extensive texts in Malayalam, plus a Malabar song with a double staff made with built-up round-head music notes. 19th-century maroon half sheepskin. XX, 404 pp.
€ 4,500
First edition, in Italian, of a pioneering work of Indian linguistics and comparative philology by the Croatian Carmelite monk Filip Vesdin (1748-1806) who took the monastic name Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo, with his 6-page dedication to Pope Pius VI. Although nominally an account of Vesdin's travels as a missionary in southern India, including Pondicherry, Verapoly (Varappuzha) and Kerala, from 1776 to 1789, the book concentrates on religious teachings and practices, society, languages and scripts, taking a comparative approach. He discusses the spread of Muslim influence in northern India and its influence on Sanskrit traditions. He is outspoken in his opinions and clashed with other scholars of his day. Vesdin learned Sanskrit and especially Malayalam, which holds a position of honour in the book. The Malayan type, used most extensively on pages 164-165 and 325, seems to be the first ever made for that script, cut for the press of the Propaganda Fide in Rome, which first showed it in 1772. The East Syriac, Devenagari (used for setting Sanskrit) and Coptic types and perhaps some others were also cut for the Propaganda Fide.
With the engraved bookplate of Gianni Boccoli illustrating a 1567 armillary sphere by Gemma Frisius. With a few leaves slightly browned and with occasional minor foxing, but otherwise in fine condition and only slightly trimmed, preserving some deckles. A pioneering work on Indian languages and society by a Croatian monk. ICCU, RAVE 004982; Milka Jauk-Pinhak, "Some notes on the pioneer Indologist Filip Vesdin ...", Scandinavian Conference-Seminar of Indological Studies, XII (1984), pp. 129-137; A. G. Pattaparambil, A study of Viaggio alle Indie Orientali (Roma 1796) ... (2007).
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