GUÉRIN Jacques (EN)
Biographical article
There are few biographical elements available concerning Abbot Guérin. He signed his books with the initials ‘J. M. F. Guérin’, to such an extent that he was attributed with the first name ‘Jacob’, after the name of the street in which he lived in Paris at the end of his life. The Paris archives (AP (Paris archives) civil status in Paris, 1861, death certificate no. 1057), the city in which he died, and the Manche département archives (AD (departmental archives) of the Manche, birth certificate, Montanel, 1802, 316 J 111), where he was born, reveal that Jacques Marie François Guérin was born on 23 December 1802 in Montanel, a commune now linked with the commune of Saint-James, on the border of the Manche and Ille-et-Vilaine départements, and his parents were Pierre Guérin (17..–18..) and Éléonore Thomas (17..–18..). Having become a priest and doctor of theology, Jacques Guérin was sent to Chandernagor in Bengal as a curate of the parish of Saint-Louis, where he arrived on 17 May 1831. His vivacity, curiosity, and strong character were noticed by the city’s administration (Lobligeois, 1975, pp. 2–7). Barely had he arrived in Chandernagore than he became involved with a certain flair in a case concerning the ‘fleurs de lys’ represented on one of the city’s houses and inside the church; there was a demand to remove these ‘fleurs de lys’ in the name of the 1830 Revolution, and he resisted this with all his might as Treasurer of the Conseil de Fabrique (Lobligeois, 1975, pp. 1–53). At the end of his apostolic mission, he wrote a letter to Monseigneur Jean Luquet (1810–1858), in which he campaigned for the reorganisation of the Vicariates in India and a greater focus on the study of Indian languages (Luquet, 1853, p. 347). Convinced that reason was the only way to promote conversion and counter the authority of the Brahmanic tradition, whose roots were ‘very profound and very extensive’ (Luquet, 1853, p. 348), he devoted himself to the study of Indian sciences, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology: ‘Having come to India with the desire to disseminate the evangelical light, and to dissipate some of the clouds that hung over the intelligence of the unfortunate Indians, it was not difficult for me to see that it was necessary at first to identify the most abstract of their errors, that is to say their astrology, and, subsequently, the specific astronomy that serves as its basis’ (Guérin, 1847, p. ii). He studied with the Bengali Brahmans at Chandernagore and Dacca, as well as at the Société Asiatique de Calcutta, where he was assisted in his studies by James Prinsep (1799–1840), Alexandre Csoma de Körös (1784–1842), and S. F. Bouchez (first names and dates unknown), an assistant librarian. He studied, in particular, astrology with the Bengali scholar Kalinath Biddyashagor (birth and death dates unknown) at Rajkhara, near Hosenabad, in the upper reaches of the River Hooghly area. He spent twelve years in India and was repatriated to France for health reasons in around 1843. When he returned to Paris, he worked as a chaplain in the Hôpital de la Charité at 47, Rue Jacob, and studied the rich collection of manuscripts that he had brought back (Guérin, 1847, p. VI). In 1847, he had an ambitious work about Indian astronomy published at the Imprimerie Nationale, which he dedicated to François d’Orléans (1818–1900), Prince de Joinville, the third son and seventh child of Louis-Philippe and Marie-Amélie Bourbon (Guérin, 1847). In 1855, he sold his collection of manuscripts after producing the catalogue himself (Guérin, 1855). The Bibliothèque Nationale eventually bought the entire collection on 20 March 1861, several weeks before his death on 24 April at the age of fifty-nine (civil status in Paris, 1861, death certificate no. 1057).
Abbot Guérin’s collection
The collection assembled by Abbot Guérin during his apostolic mission in Bengal formed a coherent ensemble of Sanskrit texts on medicine, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, grammar, and philosophy. The core of the collection was formed by a lot bought from a dealer who was selling the library belonging to a family of Bengali doctors: ‘This entire library of medical, grammar, and religious books belonged to a family of doctors, whose chiefs were called Ram-Mohone, Ram-Mohone-Dash, and Hori-Mohone-Dash. The last of them died in Chandernagore in 1833; he had no heirs; his library was pawned for a certain amount of money with a dealer who sold it to me on condition that I say nothing about it in the country and keep his name secret: he greatly feared the cast of doctors, but he was persuaded by the money I promised him’ (Guérin, 1855, p. 19). Guérin also sought manuscripts of fundamental texts such as the Sūryasiddhānta, which he commissioned copies of from the Bengali Brahmans with whom he worked: ‘With money, patience, time, and good will, I obtained both the manuscripts I was interested in, leaving the owner with a copy of the original, or authentic copies of these manuscripts, which the owners did not want to part with’ (Guérin, 1847, p. ii). He also had copies made of the manuscripts held in the library of the Société Asiatique in Calcutta: ‘I would like to express all my gratitude to Mr S. F. Bouchez, assistant librarian, who had the goodness to ensure the Brahmans who made my copies did so with the exactitude he knew I valued so greatly’ (Guérin, 1847, p. IV).
The Guérin Collection comprised 120 manuscripts, including sixty-three manuscripts about astronomy and astrology. Guérin brought together certain copies to create thematic volumes on astronomy, for example (BnF Sanskrit 245, 304, 957, 958, 961, 973, 995, 998). The isolated manuscripts, bound between two wooden boards, were grouped together in small ensembles, mounted on tabs and bound together upon their arrival in the Bibliothèque Nationale in parchment half bindings (BNF Sanskrit: 612, 740, 791, 889, 969, 972, 976, 980, 997, 1011, 1012, 1014, 1015, 1017, 1020, 1021, 1022, 1023, and 1028). Most of the copies were commissioned and dated in the 1840s. Certain older copies date from the end of the eighteenth century, and the oldest is dated 1702 (BNF Sanskrit: 1017). They are all in Bengali script on paper. Guérin himself had marked the entire collection with a black ink stamp, and a medallion with the initials ‘J. G.’, featuring a stylised dove at the top and another under the number.
One document is of particular interest to art historians: this is a volume with twenty-eight plates that comprise the Tantric art of Bengal (BNF Indien: 869). The first half contains drawings in pen and black ink. It shows anthropomorphic representations of the twenty-seven constellations (nakṣatras) used by astrologists to determine horoscopes. The second half comprises drawings heightened with gouache and watercolours. The paintings demonstrate the way of representing numbers in paintings, through processes of repetition of floral, anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and geometric motifs, via a system of chronograms used to note the dates (moon = 1, eyes = 2, etc.). The captions are in the Bengali script and certain Sanskrit words were sometimes translated into French by Abbot Guérin.
The Guérin Collection was purchased by the Bibliothèque Nationale on 20 March 1861 for the sum of 10,000 francs, which was paid over three years (BNF, Register C, nos. 5507 to 5625).
