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.
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 Avadhi at Allahabad, with the TulsidasRamcharitmanas 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]
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.
Bolle, K. W. (1996). "Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions from the Regions of India; Studies in Honour of Charlotte Vaudeville; Edited by Diana L. Eck; Françoise Mallison". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 116 (1): 170–172. doi:10.2307/606419. JSTOR606419.
Haberman, D.L. (1992). "Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions from the Regions of India. Studies in Honor of Charlotte Vaudeville. Edited by Diana L. Eck and Francoise Mallison". The Journal of Asian Studies. 51 (4): 953–954. doi:10.2307/2059102. JSTOR2059102.
