Storia do Mogor 3.6

3.6

In 1778 A. H. Anquetil Duperron published at Amsterdam his 'Legislation Orientale' (quarto), and in the index he describes Manouchi as a Venetian physician at the court of the Mogul, whose memoirs he saw in 1763 in the library of the Jesuit Professed House at Paris, this manuscript being the original of Father Catrou's work. Duperron makes over twenty quotations from Catrou in support of his various contentions. J. Bernoulli in his 'Beschreibung von Hindustan' (founded on Père Joseph Tieffenthaler's papers), vol. ii., part ii. (1788), p. 192, has an interesting note on Manucci in reference to Tieffenthaler's criticism (vol. i., p. 29) of the erroneous latitudes and longitudes which appear in Catrou (edition of 1705, pp. 258-261). Tieffenthaler declares Manucci 'a better physician than geographer or astronomer.' If so, Heaven help him, for as a physician his learning was of the crudest. However, the whole of the statements so criticised are absent from Manucci's text, and must have come from some one or other of Catrou's additional sources. Similar instances of misleading interpolations will be referred to farther on. Bernouilli had, however, a most just sense of the need for the original text, for he says: 'This work (Manucci) is worth printing just as the author wrote it, in Portuguese. I invite its learned owner to endow the public with it' ('Recherches sur l'Inde,' 1787, ii., note a to p. 284).