OCHOA Charles d' (EN)
Biography
Charles d'Ochoa was born in Bayonne on February 26, 1816. He was the illegitimate son of Julie Belles, born in 1792 or 1793 in Billodas, a village in the Spanish Basque Country. Belles was the daughter of François Belles and Christine Ouralde who were merchants (AD Pyrénées-Atlantique, Bayonne, état civil, naissances, 1814-1825, f. 192). His given name was Pierre Charles Olloba and he sometimes used the second to sign his early articles. His milieu was Basque traders, as indicated by the witnesses recorded on his birth certificate: Pierre Mitche, known as Charlesteguy, and Étienne Bardy, two young sales clerks from Bayonne (AD Pyrénées-Atlantique, id.). He studied in Bordeaux, where he was tutored by Henri Galos (1804-1873), an administrator in the service of the colonies and deputy for Gironde. He married Isabelle Foy (1818-?), daughter of General Foy (1775-1825). Hired as a clerk-trader for an arms company, he embarked on a first trip to South India via Ceylon. His travel diary (bibliothèque Mazarine, Ms. 547) describes the anticipation of a favourable wind at Pauillac in February-March 1835, and a departure on March 22 for Ceylon where he arrived on July 24. After a six-month stay in Madras and Pondicherry, he set sail again on February 28, 1836 and arrived in Bordeaux at the end of April. On the strength of this experience, Charles d'Ochoa became interested in the literature and languages of India. In 1839, he took courses in Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani with Joseph Héliodore Garcin de Tassy (1794-1878) at the École des langues orientales (AN F/17/2995/2). He joined the Société asiatique in 1840 and collaborated with the Nouvelles Annales de voyages by publishing a translation of the account of the mission led by Captain Robert Boileau Pemberton (18?-18?) in Bhutan, which was written by the botanist William Griffith (1810-1845) in English (Olloba d'Ochoa, 1840), a language he mastered perfectly, in addition to Spanish.
Scientific Mission in India
In 1840, Charles d'Ochoa asked François Guizot (1787-1874), then Minister of Foreign Affairs, for a consular post in Bombay, but he was refused. In 1842, supported by Henri Galos and Garcin de Tassy, he requested a scientific mission to India in order to acquire manuscripts, write a history of Indian literature, and collect the information necessary to establish new commercial relations between France and the Indian territories that were not yet administered by the English (AN F/17/2995/2). Abel-François Villemain (1791-1870), Minister of Public Instruction, granted him credit for a "scientific mission in the states located to the northwest of Hindustan in order to collect geographical, ethnographic, and literary documents” (décret du 10 octobre 1842, AN F/17/2995/2). The mission was planned for three years from January 1, 1843, at the rate of 1,000 francs per month the first year and 800 francs per month the following two. It was to be added to the scientific mission requested by Dr. Godefroy Robert (1809-1888), also a traveler and pupil of Garcin de Tassy (AN F/17/3003/2). The route proposed by Charles d'Ochoa passed through Rajasthan, Punjab, Kashmir, Tibet, Nepal, and Bengal, from which he was to return to France departing from Calcutta. After landing in Bombay on March 30, 1843, Charles d'Ochoa befriended Robert Xavier Murphy (1803-1857) who was a skilled connoisseur of Indian languages, a translator of Marathi at the Bombay Supreme Court, and editor of the Bombay Gazette and the Bombay Times D’Ochoa made plans with Murphy to write a history of Marathi poetry (BnF NAF 8989, f. 51-54). He then went to Pune where he met the paṇḍit Viṣṇuśāstrī Bāpāṭa and Nīlakaṇṭha Thatte, who helped him with his collection of manuscripts in Sanskrit and Marathi, as well as the Muslim scholar Gosha Mahammad, who helped him with the manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani (Urdu) [AN F/17/2995/2 and Kulkarni A. R., 1988]. In December 1843, Rājārāma Śāstrī Jānavekara, inspector of schools in Pune, recommended Vaidya Vināyaka Jośi to d’Ochoa to perfect his knowledge of Marathi (Kulkarni A. R., 1988, p. 179). Colonel Vans Kennedy (1783-1846) also attested to his very good knowledge of Urdu (BnF NAF 8989, f. 47, letter of August 13, 1844). At the beginning of 1844, Charles d'Ochoa obtained letters of recommendation and undertook a journey in the Dekkan, which took him from Satara to Akalkot, passing through Mahabaleshwar, Khanapur, and Pandharpur. He reached Bijapur on March 15, where his health deteriorated. He was forced to return to Bombay on April 26, 1844. He returned briefly to Pune where he was treated by a British doctor, Dr. James Don (18?-18?) (BnF NAF 8989, f. 42). He then stayed in Bombay until the end of the summer, before being repatriated to France. He landed in Bordeaux in November 1844 (AN F/17/2995/2, letter from Ochoa to Villemain, Barsac, November 16, 1844). He reached Paris with the idea of continuing its Indianist work and publishing his reports (AN F/17/2995/2). He died on June 2, 1846 (AP, reconstituted civil status, death certificate, 10th arrondissement, 1846) without having been able to complete his projects of publication, but he left behind a rich collection of documents on the modern literature of North India.
The Ochoa Holdings
The collection of Charles d'Ochoa, kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, includes some 180 manuscripts and 80 lithographed works. The manuscripts are kept in the department of manuscripts, in the language collections, under the call numbers "Indian", "Sanskrit", "Persian" and "Arabic". The lithographed texts are largely preserved in the department of literature and arts under the symbol "XO-4" (Indo-Aryan literature). Some imitate handwriting to such an extent that they have on occasion been transferred to the manuscripts collection. The collection was given the name "Fonds Ochoa" and was transmitted by the Minister of Public Instruction Narcisse-Achille de Salvandy (1795-1856), successor of Villemain, to the Bibliothèque nationale on January 12, 1847 (AN F/17/ 2995/2; BnF, Manuscripts, donation register no. 4242 to 4486). Some books and manuscripts declined by the Bibliothèque nationale were sent to the libraries of the Institut de France and of the Arsenal (AN F/17/2995/2). A list was published in the Journal asiatique in 1848 by Eugène Burnouf (1801-1852) for texts in Indian languages (Sanskrit, Prakrit, Marathi, Hindi) and Joseph Toussaint Reinaud (1795-1867) for languages in Arabic-Persian writing (Arabic, Persian, Urdu) [Burnouf E., Reinaud J. T., 1848].
The manuscript collection mostly contains copies made at the request of Charles d'Ochoa. In Pune, Viṣṇuśāstrī Bāpāṭa had recommended him to work with the scribe Govindarāva Bhāva Gaṇapule. In Pandharpur, he had connected with the paṇḍit Rāmacandra Ballāla Paṭavardhana whom he engaged to make new copies of manuscripts. Intended to further the history of literature envisaged by Charles d'Ochoa (AN F/17/2995/2), they focus mainly on the great authors of Marathi literature such as Nāmadeva (1270-1350), Jñānadeva (1271?-1296), and Tukārāma (1608?-1648?). For the historical aspects, Charles d'Ochoa had also collected chronicles of the Marathi dynasties such as the Bīṃbākhyāna (BnF Indien 644) relating the history of the governors of Konkan, or an old copy in modi script of the Śivajicarītra (BnF Indien 661), relating the history of the Maratha of Shivaji (1630-1680). Persian chronicles are also present, notably in a collection copied in 1742 in the Indian script Nasta‛līq (BnF Supplément Persan 959), as are the great texts of Persian literature, Gulistān by Saʿdī (1596-1656?), Dīvān by Ḥāfiż (1325-1390), and the poems of Niẓāmi (1141-1209). We also note the presence of Jain texts, at a time when this religion was not well-known in Europe. Alongside copies of emblematic texts from the Jain canon, there are older copies of Jain narrative literature in Prakrit such as the Jñātādhammakathāsūtra (BnF Indian 706) or the Susaṭhakathā (BnF Indian 883) that are complete with commentaries. Literature in Sanskrit is also well represented with copies of texts relating to various fields, such as architecture, philosophy, grammar, and literature. Again, copies commissioned by Charles d'Ochoa sit alongside older copies of famous poems, such as Śrīharṣa's Naiṣadhacarita (twelfth century) with commentary (BnF Sanscrit 692-693, 697-698). The collection carried out by Charles d'Ochoa, interrupted by his illness and his premature return to France, nevertheless provides a good overview of the variety and richness of Indian languages and literatures, such as various techniques for producing writing, ancient manuscripts, contemporary copies, lithographs, and movable-type printing.
