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Charles Wilkins, Le Bhaguat-Geeta ou Dialogues de Kreeshna et d'Arjoon; contenant un précis de la religion & de la morale des Indiens. Traduit du Samfcrit, la langue sacrée des Brahmes, en Anglois, par M. Charles Wilkins; et de l’Anglois en François, par M. Parraud, de l’Académie des Arcades de Rome, Paris: Chez Benoît Morin, Libraire, rue de la Harpe, 1787

[4], clxii, 180 pp. Title page with decorative rule border, preface by the French translator, followed by Wilkins’ original introduction and his full English translation rendered in French prose; contemporary full mottled calf, the spine gilt in compartments with floral and foliate tools, contrasting red morocco label gilt, marbled endpapers with a heraldic bookplate to front pastedown, all edges red. The binding represents an elegant late 18th-century French style, reflecting the period’s preference for decorative gilt tooling and vibrant marbled endpapers.
20 x 13 cm

THE GITA ENLIGHTENED: THE FIRST FRENCH TRANSLATION OF INDIA’S SACRED DIALOGUE, 1787

First published in Paris in 1787, this rare French edition of the Bhagavad Gita marks the earliest transmission of India’s sacred philosophical dialogue into the European Enlightenment world. Translated from Sanskrit into English by Charles Wilkins, and from English into French by the Abbé Parraud, this edition introduced Francophone readers to Krishna’s metaphysical teachings on duty, action, and devotion—presented not as exotic mysticism, but as a profound moral and theological system worthy of Western engagement.

Published in pre-Revolutionary Paris at the height of Europe’s fascination with the civilisations of the East, this rare 1787 edition—Le Bhaguat-Geeta ou Dialogues de Kreeshna et d’Arjoon; contenant un précis de la religion & de la morale des Indiens—stands as a monumental artefact of intellectual transmission and spiritual encounter. Translated into French by the Abbé Parraud, a member of the Académie des Arcades de Rome, from the pioneering English edition by Sir Charles Wilkins (1785), it marked the first time one of the cardinal scriptures of Hinduism was made available to a Francophone audience in its entirety.

Wilkins, a pioneering Sanskritist and East India Company official, had rendered the Gita into English from the original Sanskrit under the patronage of Governor-General Warren Hastings, who famously declared in his preface that the work would "survive when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist." That edition was the first direct translation of a Sanskrit scripture into a European language. Parraud’s French version appeared just two years later, reflecting the growing appetite among Enlightenment thinkers for access to Indian religious and moral philosophy. In translating the Gita from Sanskrit to English and thence into French, these early Orientalists offered more than linguistic service—they erected a bridge between metaphysical traditions. Parraud’s edition, written in the language of reason and virtue, was carefully tailored to Enlightenment readers attuned to moral philosophy, natural religion, and universal ethics.

Structured as a dialogue between the divine Krishna and the warrior Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, the Bhagavad Gita addresses enduring themes of duty (dharma), selfless action, the immortality of the soul, the illusion of materiality, and the pursuit of divine union. Its moral and philosophical reach captivated European readers who found in its verses echoes of Stoic ethics, Platonic idealism, and Christian mysticism. The subtitle of this French edition—“un précis de la religion & de la morale des Indiens”—reveals both the translator’s didactic ambition and the Enlightenment framing of Eastern texts as repositories of universal moral insight.

What arrived from the banks of the Ganges to the salons of Paris was no mere curiosity. The Bhagavad Gita—poised between sword and soul—was received with the shock of recognition: an Eastern scripture that articulated with striking clarity the dilemmas of conscience, detachment, and transcendence. As Hastings remarked, it was “a performance of great originality… which in its reasoning and sublimity of diction almost stands alone.”

Presented in this 1787 edition with a dual mission—faithful representation and philosophical interpretation—the Gita resonated not only in France but across Europe. It informed the writings of German Romantic philosophers, inspired idealist thinkers, and foreshadowed the 19th-century efflorescence of comparative religion and Sanskrit studies. It marked one of the earliest moments when Indian thought was treated not as an ethnographic curiosity, but as a canon-worthy expression of spiritual and ethical vision.

Typographically elegant and printed by the Parisian publisher Buisson, the edition bears all the hallmarks of fine pre-Revolutionary French printing. Its bibliographic rarity is matched only by its symbolic gravity: more than a book, it stands as a vector of cultural rapprochement—an Enlightenment artefact that revealed the internal coherence, spiritual majesty, and philosophical subtlety of Hinduism to the European intellectual conscience.

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