It is rare to find scholarly classics whose authors were not eager to be acknowledged, but such is the case of Moeurs et coutumes des Indiens (1777), a founding treatise of Indology and a classic of early anthropology whose real author remained obscured for two centuries. That the mystery endured so long is in part due to the fact that Moeurs et coutumes was published twice in the half-century following its composition, under two different names. But the reason its true author, the Jesuit Father Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux (1691-1779) wanted to remain anonymous was the state of shame and ignominy in which the former members of the Society of Jesus found themselves after Clement XIV dissolved the Society in 1773.
This paper presents Indology’s first treatise for the first time to an English-speaking audience with a dual purpose: to describe its content and descriptive method in the context of contemporary travel and proto-ethnographic productions, particularly those of non-Jesuit missionary orders; and to assess its influence upon, and similarities to and differences from, the disciplines of ethnology, anthropology and Indology as they came to maturity in the nineteenth century. The main aim is to gain consciousness of how the ethnological sciences were molded – or not – by missionary methods and circumstances of the Age of Enlightenment, and how awareness of these facts can help us to develop more faithful ways of perceiving anthropological realities.
