Anquetil Duperron

India’s colonial past was not just the story of the East India Company and later British Rule. Several European nations coveted India’s riches and made their way across stormy seas to first barter and trade with the natives and later gradually began to colonise the lands. Familiar as we are with the British telling of Indian history of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries of our great land, we do know that another version exists through the writings of other European traders, mercenary soldiers, government employees, scientists, travellers and missionaries. In perusing the pages of their personal diaries, official reports, published tomes and articles of some of these Frenchmen we perceive that a sense of adventure, mercantile greed, fascination for the exotic east and most of all a deep rooted hatred for the English jostled for space and ink as they recounted their times and lives. Anquetil Duperron in this work gives us a small slice of the history of our land, India, which he loved, appreciated and explored. While counselling his government to ap­preciate the riches of Indian culture, language and the people he pleads for the establishing of permanent and strong ties of diplomacy through trained diplomats. Far seeing for one who lived in the eighteenth century.