Madeleine Biardeau (16 May 1922
Niort
Niort (; Poitevin: ''Niàu''; oc, Niòrt; la, Novioritum) is a commune in the Deux-Sèvres department, western France. It is the prefecture of Deux-Sèvres.
The population of Niort is 58,707 (2017) and more than 177,000 people live in the ...
- 1 February 2010
Cherveux
Cherveux () is a commune in the Deux-Sèvres department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in western France.
Origins
Prehistoric period : Flint tools (bifaces-knife-scraper-ax-tips of arrows) buried in the plain testify that the place was inh ...
) was an
Indologist
Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies.
The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') is of ...
from
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...
.
Early life
Madeleine Biardeau was born into a middle-class family of small entrepreneurs. She was educated at the
Ecole normale supérieure in
Sèvres
Sèvres (, ) is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris, in the Hauts-de-Seine department, Île-de-France region. The commune, which had a population of 23,251 as of 2018, is known for ...
, where she studied philosophy. Here, she was attracted to the
Eastern
Eastern may refer to:
Transportation
*China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai
*Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways
*Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 1926 to 1991
* Eastern Air L ...
spirituality and started learning
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...
in order to study
Hindu philosophy
Hindu philosophy encompasses the philosophies, world views and teachings of Hinduism that emerged in Ancient India which include six systems ('' shad-darśana'') – Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta.Andrew Nicholson ...
.
Indology
Curious about India, Biardeau joined the
University of Travancore for two years in the 1950s, and studied Sanskrit texts with
pandit
A Pandit ( sa, पण्डित, paṇḍit; hi, पंडित; also spelled Pundit, pronounced ; abbreviated Pt.) is a man with specialised knowledge or a teacher of any field of knowledge whether it is shashtra (Holy Books) or shastra (Wea ...
s. She visited India almost every year until the 1990s, and worked closely with pandits at the
Deccan College (Pune) and the
French Institute of Pondicherry. She visited places of worship in towns and villages, surveying people from different castes and collecting information about the various cults and rituals.
Meanwhile, she also taught at the
École pratique des hautes études
The École pratique des hautes études (), abbreviated EPHE, is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is highly selective, and counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions. It is a constituent college o ...
.
She studied the philosophy contained in the ''
Puranas
Purana (; sa, , '; literally meaning "ancient, old"Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature (1995 Edition), Article on Puranas, , page 915) is a vast genre of Indian literature about a wide range of topics, particularly about legends an ...
'' and the ''
Advaita Vedanta
''Advaita Vedanta'' (; sa, अद्वैत वेदान्त, ) is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience, and the oldest extant tradition of the orthodox Hindu school Vedānta. The term ''Advaita'' ( ...
'' in detail. She translated the works of
Mandana Misra,
Vacaspati Misra, and
Bhartṛhari (grammarian)
Bhartṛhari ( Devanagari: ; also romanised as Bhartrihari; fl. c. 5th century CE) was a Hindu linguistic philosopher to whom are normally ascribed two influential Sanskrit texts:
* the ''Vākyapadīya'', on Sanskrit grammar and linguistic p ...
into
French. She wrote her doctoral
dissertation on ''The Theory of Knowledge and the Philosophy of Speech in Classical Brahmanism'' in 1964 (in French)
The Hindu epics constituted a main area of Biardeau's scholarship. She translated the ''
Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE, and later stages e ...
'' of
Valmiki
Valmiki (; Sanskrit: वाल्मीकि, ) is celebrated as the harbinger-poet in Sanskrit literature. The epic ''Ramayana'', dated variously from the 5th century BCE to first century BCE, is attributed to him, based on the attributi ...
into French (1991), in collaboration with two other scholars: Marie-Claude Porcher and Philippe Benoit. Her last major work comprised the two edited volumes of the ''
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the K ...
'' published in 2002.
Biardeau retired to Cherveux in 2008, and died there in 2010.
Bibliography
* Histoires de poteaux : Variations védiques autour de la Déesse hindoue, École Française d'Extrême Orient, 2005.
** Stories about Posts: Vedic Variations around the Hindu Goddess (1994). . Translated by
Alf Hiltebeitel
Alfred John Hiltebeitel (born 1942) is Columbian Professor of Religion, History, and Human Sciences at George Washington University in Washington DC, USA. His academic specialism is in ancient Sanskrit epics such as the ''Mahabharata'' and ''Ramaya ...
.
* L'hindouisme, anthropologie d'une civilisation, Flammarion, 1995.
** ''Hinduism: The Anthropology of a Civilization'' (1994). . Translated by Richard Nice.
* ''Le Mahabharata'', Le Seuil, 2002. A two-edition French translation of the Mahabharata.
References
External links
Obituaryin ''Indologica'' Volume XXXVII (2011)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Biardeau, Madelein
1922 births
2010 deaths
People from Niort
École pratique des hautes études faculty
French Indologists
Translators from Sanskrit
Translators to French
20th-century translators
Indian expatriates in France