12mo. Volume I: Voyage de l’Inde à la Mekke, xxxii, 246 pp., / Volume II: Voyages de la Perse dans l’Inde et du Bengal en Perse, Part I, [translated from Persian], cxxxi, 142 pp., / Volume III: Voyage de la Perse dans l’Inde et du Bengal en Perse, Part II, [translated from English], 268 pp., [6] catalogue / Volume IV: Voyage Pittoresque de l’Inde, fait dans les années 1780-1783 Part I, xxvii, 222 pp., / Volume V: Voyage Pittoresque de l’Inde, fait dans les années 1780-1783 Part II, 252 pp., / Volume VI: Voyage chez le Mahrattes: xxiv, 350 pp., modern red boards, title gilt on spine, 4 colour frontispieces + 15 colour plates on double page, last leaf of volume 1 partly glued to back cover, lower corner of page 223 of volume 3 has a 2cm cut without affecting text, small marginal tear to page 61 in volume 4 not affecting text, otherwise set in very good condition, volumes published as follows: Vol. 1: AN V - 1797 / Vol. 2: AN VI / Vol. 3: AN VI, Imprimerie de Crapelet / Vol. 4 & 5: AN XIII - 1805 Imprimerie de Delance / Vol 6: 1820, Imprimerie d’Everat, Paris, 1820.

Synopsis

Louis- Mathieu Langlès was a friend and colleague of the distinguished French Orientalist Antoine Isaac Sylvester de Sacy and had studied Arabic, Chinese, Malay and Persian. In addition to his numerous publications on the topography, languages and culture of the East, his main contribution to Oriental studies was his part in the foundation of the École spéciale des langues Orientales vivantes in Paris in 1795. This institution which replaced École des Langues Orientales, was unique in Europe, and specialised in teaching the spoken, rather than the classical, languages of the East. Langlès himself was given the chair of Persian. These volumes contain Langlès’s translations of various accounts of journeys in the East, the first of which is the pilgrimage of Abd al-Karim ibn Aqibat ibn Muhammed Bulaqi al-Kashmiri to Mecca and which had been translated into English by Francis Gladwin in 1788. Langlès’s own translation was based on Galdwin’s but Langlès added explanatory notes. The second volume contains Langlès’s translation of the account of Abd al-Razaq, who was appointed ambassador to India by Shah Rukh, one of the sons of Timur, in the mid-15th century; and of a memoir by William Franklin who traveled in the service of the East India Company from Bengal to Shiraz in 1787 and 1788. The remainder of the work is largely composed of a translation of the landscape-painter William Hodges’s travels in India in the early 1780s and contains some particularly fine plates. Bibliographic references: Brunet III – 820 – Gay 3631 Chahine 2618.