Tuesday, August 15, 2023
Fakirs
Peter Brown, Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), p. 358:
Dear Michael,
I refer to your article quoting Peter Brown on the supposed use of the word 'fakir' as a term of abuse: 'a derogatory term used by the British in India for Hindu and Muslim holy men'. Now when I come upon this sort of thing I reach for my Hobson-Jobson, and I can't find anything there indicating that it was a term of abuse. There are a lot of citations, none of which support the derogatory sense (but I'm sure you've got your own copy of Hobson-Jobson so I won't type them out laboriously); but the definition is:
Best regards,
Graham [Asher]
One of the definitions of fakir at Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé is:
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But when he turned to the monks of Antioch13 and produced a series of remarkable translations of the lives of monastic saints in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, Festugière treated his subjects with a contempt more toxic even than the scorn of Gibbon. He was utterly dismissive of their thought-world, and of the role of demons in it. On such topics, he spoke with the shrill voice of the nineteenth-century French "civilizing mission" in Africa and the Middle East.Pierre Hadot, "André-Jean Festugière (1898-1982)," École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire 92 (1983-1984) 31-35 (at 34-35):Let us go back to the demons. Let us try to imagine for ourselves the terrors of those persons of the past. Let us try to get into the skin of such people [the monks], whose modes of thought and feeling do not really rise above those of the most savage primitive lost in the forests of Equatorial Africa.14Once, when asked by my friend Pierre Hadot what he thought of the monks of East Rome, Festugière answered, with a full load of colonial contempt: "Fakirs!" (a derogatory term used by the British in India for Hindu and Muslim holy men).15
It was this contempt, as much for modern Africans as for ancient monks, that I was determined to overcome.
13. A.J. Festugière, Antioche païenne et chrétienne (Paris: de Boccard, 1959), 245–310.
14. A.J. Festugière, Les Moines d'Orient, vol. 1, Culture et Sainteté (Paris: Le Cerf, 1961), 33.
15. P. Hadot, Annuaire de l'École pratique des Hautes Études 92 (1983-1984): 31-35.
Parfois même cet amour pour le monde antique l'emportait sur son amour pour le monde chrétien; plus précisément, il semblait douter de certains aspects du monde chrétien. Je l'ai entendu dire par boutade, au sujet des moines du ive et du ve siècle: «Des fakirs!».
Dear Michael,
I refer to your article quoting Peter Brown on the supposed use of the word 'fakir' as a term of abuse: 'a derogatory term used by the British in India for Hindu and Muslim holy men'. Now when I come upon this sort of thing I reach for my Hobson-Jobson, and I can't find anything there indicating that it was a term of abuse. There are a lot of citations, none of which support the derogatory sense (but I'm sure you've got your own copy of Hobson-Jobson so I won't type them out laboriously); but the definition is:
FAKEER. s. Hind. from Arab. faķīr ('poor'). Properly an indigent person, but specially 'one poor in the sight of God,' applied to a Mahommedan religious mendicant, and then, loosely and inaccurately, to Hindu devotees and naked ascetics. And this last is the most ordinary Anglo-Indian use.And I may remark that when Churchill referred to Gandhi as 'a Middle Temple lawyer posing as a naked fakir' he was not casting any aspersions on fakirs but on Gandhi's supposed hypocrisy.
Best regards,
Graham [Asher]
One of the definitions of fakir at Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé is:
Personne qui exécute en public des exercices physiques difficiles et des tours extraordinaires, prétendument attribués à un pouvoir surnaturel et relevant en fait de l'illusionisme.
