Charlotte Vaudeville

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Charlotte Vaudeville
Born1918
École française d'Extrême-Orient
Academic advisorsJules Bloch, Louis Renou
Notable studentsFrançoise Mallison

Charlotte Vaudeville (1918 — 28 April 2006) was a French

Indologist, best known for her researches into the bhakti traditions and literature. Her treatises on the medieval saint Kabir
have been lauded. She retired as a professor at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 in 1988.

Life and career

Charlotte Louise Marie Vaudeville was born in La Tronche, France in 1918. She graduated with a degree in classics in 1939, a diploma in Indian studies in 1942 and in Hindi in 1943 from the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. A Doctor of Letters degree followed in 1950.[1]

Vaudeville studied under Jules Bloch and Louis Renou, adapting their philological approach to religious literature to incorporate the social aspect of composition.[2]

In 1945, she studied classical

Allahabad, with the Tulsidas Ramcharitmanas becoming the subject of her thesis.[3] This was her first book, published in 1955. She also worked on Kabir's poems at the Banaras Hindu University, translating them into French.[1] Her two monographs, Kabir Granthavali (1957) and Kabir (in English, 1974), became the definitive references on the saint.[4][5] Especially conclusive was her establishment of the corpus of sayings that could be attributed to him personally via critical analyses of the texts.[6]

Recognising the currency of medieval religious songs even in the 20th century, she continued her studies of the works of Mirabai, Surdas, and Jayasi. Her Dhola-Maru (1962), a compendium of Rajasthani ballads, and Barahmâsâ (1965) demonstrated how Hindu tradition fed folksongs and vernacular poetry.[4]

Vaudeville worked at the

University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 in 1988.[1]

Switching from Hindi to Marathi, Vaudeville published her investigations into the Haripath of Dnyandev in 1982.[7]

In her early career, Vaudeville also investigated the Krishna tradition of Braj, in which she revealed its Saivite foundation.[8][9]

Charlotte Vaudeville's works in Indian religious lore combined the archaeological and classical background to medieval and modern tradition. She combined ethnological fieldwork with textual analyses, establishing a methodology that was followed by subsequent scholars.[9] Her especial focus was on the bhakti tradition.[10]

A further path of analysis was on ginan,

Ismaili folk literature that was similar to padas, a Hindu style of poetry.[11] Vaudeville established the role of Islam in the emergence of Hindu vernacular literatures, which were able to echo popular protests against the intellectual prestige of Sanskrit-based sacred texts.[12]

Selected works

  • Étude sur les sources et la composition du Râmâyana de Tulsî-Dâs. Paris: Libr. d'Amérique et d'Orient-Adrien Maisonneuve. 1955.
  • Les Duhâ de Dhola-Mârû. Une ancienne ballade du Râjasthân. Pondicherry: Institut français d'indologie. 1962.
  • Kabir. Oxford: Clarendon. 1974.
  • Le Râmâyan de Tulsî-Dâs. Texte hindi traduit et commenté. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. 1977.
  • Kabîr-Vânî, recension occidentale, introd. et concordances. Pondicherry: Institut français d'indologie. 1982.
  • Myths, Saints and Legends in Medieval India. Delhi: Oxford University. 1996.

Citations

  1. ^ a b c EFEO.
  2. ^ Clémentin-Ojha & Manguin 2007, p. 197.
  3. ^ Mallison 2007, p. xliii.
  4. ^ a b Mallison 2007, p. xliv.
  5. ^ Classe 2000, p. 746.
  6. ^ Horstmann 2002, p. 1.
  7. ^ Clémentin-Ojha & Manguin 2007, p. 198.
  8. ^ Bolle 1996, p. 171.
  9. ^ a b Haberman 1992, p. 953.
  10. ^ Bolle 1996, p. 170.
  11. ^ Haberman 1992, p. 954.
  12. ^ Mallison 2007, p. xlv.

References

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