Philippe Édouard Foucaux (1811-1894) was a French tibetologist

Tibetology

Tibetology refers to the study of things related to Tibet, including its history, religion, language, politics and the collection of Tibetan articles of historical, cultural and religious significance...

. He published the first Tibetan grammar

Tibetan language

The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...

 in French and occupied the first chaire of Tibetan studies in Europe.

He was born in the town of Angers

Angers

Angers is the main city in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France about south-west of Paris. Angers is located in the French region known by its pre-revolutionary, provincial name, Anjou, and its inhabitants are called Angevins....

 on September 15 to merchant family. At age 27 he left for Paris to study Indology with Eugène Burnouf

Eugène Burnouf

Eugène Burnouf was an eminent French scholar and orientalist who made significant contributions to the deciphering of Old Persian cuneiform....

. After becoming aware of the work of Sándor Kőrösi Csoma

Sándor Korösi Csoma

Sándor Kőrösi Csoma , born Csoma Sándor, also known as Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, was a Hungarian philologist and orientalist, author of the first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar book. He was born in Kőrös, Grand Principality of Transylvania...

, he studied Tibetan by himself for two years. After this he was appointed as a Tibetan teacher at the École des langues orientales where he gave his inaugural lecture 31st January 1842. Funding for the position was canceled but Foucaux continued to instruct his students thereafter on a pro bono basis.

Foucaux was a member of the Sociéte d'Ethnographie. After France became the Second Empire

Second French Empire

The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

, Foucaux was elected as a member of the Collège de France

Collège de France

The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...

. Foucaux was married to Mary Summer, born Marie Filon, who also did work as a buddhologist

Buddhist Studies

Buddhist studies, also known as Buddhology , is the academic study of Buddhism. The term applies especially to the modern academic field, which is a subset of Religious Studies, and is distinct from Buddhist philosophy or Buddhist theology...

. He was a corresponding member of the American Oriental Society

American Oriental Society

The American Oriental Society was chartered under the laws of Massachusetts on September 7, 1842. It is one of the oldest learned societies in America, and is the oldest devoted to a particular field of scholarship....

from 1865.

Works

• 1858 Grammaire de la langue tibétaine. Paris: L'imprimerie impériale.
• 1858 Le trésor des belles paroles, choix de sentences composées en tibétain; suivies d'une élégie tirée du Kanjour. Paris: B. Duprat.

Works about Foucaux

• Le Calloc'h, Bernard. "Philippe-Edouard Foucaux: First Tibetan teacher in Europe." Tibet Journal 12.1 (1987): 39-49.
• Le Calloc'h, Bernard. Un Angevin oublié, Philippe-Edouard Foucaux,le premier tibétologue français.

External links

• Philippe-Édouard Foucaux on ippolito-desideri.net (in Italian)