The ASTRA team nvites you to an online lecture on Wednesday, 17 June 2026 by Prof Jérôme Petit (Bibliothèque nationale de France – École Pratique des Hautes Études), from 13:30 to 15:00.
Prof Jérôme Petit’s lecture is titled “Astronomical Works in the Gentil Collection in Paris”.
The lecture will be accessible on Zoom via the following link: HTTPS://EU02WEB.ZOOM-X.DE/J/67795520099
It will be the fifth and last event in this spring’s ASTRA Colloquium series “Occult Sciences in South Asia: A Non-Western History”.
The full program is available here.
Abstract: Jean-Baptiste Gentil was a well-known enlightened military officer who worked for Shuja ud-Daula in Faizabad (Awadh) in the 1760s. There, he assembled a collection of Indian paintings and a collection of Persian and Sanskrit manuscripts, which he offered to King Louis XVI in exchange for privileges upon his return to France in 1777. The manuscript collection includes one hundred and twenty historical texts in Persian and forty manuscripts in Sanskrit. A study of the latter reveals an interesting corpus of texts compiled by Gentil and the Brahmins with whom he worked: popular works such as the Rāmāyaṇa, the Adhyātmarāmāyaṇa, the Pañcaratna of the Mahābhārata, alongside numerous devotional texts, some of which are illuminated, and works by great Sanskrit poets such as Kālidāsa and Bhāravi. It is interesting to note that some astronomical works are also present, which demonstrates the importance of the discipline in the Sanskrit sphere of Faizabad at that time. Horoscope scrolls for children born in the 1740s, pañcāṅga for the years 1760–1762 and a copy of the Jyotiṣaratnamālā, a treatise for astrologers, are some of the manuscripts I wish to discuss. Made for a child born in November 1739, one of the horoscopes (BnF Sanscrit 964) is of particular interest: a 37-meter-long scroll, it presents many illuminations showing the twelve rāśī signs, the Sun, and some other astral figures. Biography: Jérôme Petit is curator of the South and Southeast Asian manuscript collections at the National Library of France (BnF, Paris) and professor for the study of manuscript cultures in the Indian world at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, Paris). His last book is devoted to the history of the Indian manuscript collection of the BnF, with a particular focus on the scientific mission led by Charles d’Ochoa in the 1840s (La mission de Charles d’Ochoa, Paris, 2025).
To contact the organizer : jarzoumanov@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
More information available here >>