Person · French physician and traveller
Francois Bernier
Also known as François Bernier
Francois Bernier (1620–1688) was a French physician and philosopher who lived in Mughal India from 1658, first as doctor to Dara Shikoh and then at Aurangzeb's court. His Travels in the Mogul Empire, built on his own journeys and on the testimony of courtiers, is a central European source for the war of succession, the court and Kashmir. Back in Paris he published the first post-classical division of humanity into 'races', which later fed scientific racism.
- Date
- 1620 – 1688
- Function
- Travel & migration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His patron Danishmand Khan paid for a famous pandit, earlier pensioned by Dara Shikoh, to stay at Bernier's side for over three years, while Bernier explained Harvey's anatomy and translated Gassendi and Descartes into Persian for his patron.
The Wikipedia article gives his Indian stay as 14 October 1658 to 20 February 1670 in one place but says he returned to France in 1669 in another.
Connections (5)
- Court associationDara Shikoh
Soon after landing at Surat in 1658 Bernier joined the retinue of Dara Shikoh, and from early 1659 he served as the prince's personal physician until Dara's defeat and execution, a downfall Bernier later wrote up as history. The tie outlived Dara: the pandit who sat with Bernier for three years at Danishmand Khan's expense had earlier been pensioned by Dara, and is generally identified as Kavindracharya Sarasvati, who taught Dara Sanskrit.
- Court associationAurangzeb
After Dara's fall Bernier became a physician at Aurangzeb's court under the protection of Danishmand Khan, and his Travels in the Mogul Empire is mainly about the reigns of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb. European medical training gave him access to all ranks of the court, even to the harem when medically required, and he described the Peacock Throne in the Diwan-i-Khas, valuing it at four crores of rupees.
- Traveller routeSrinagar
Aurangzeb's progress of 1664–65 took the Mughal court from Delhi to Kashmir with Bernier in it, and he became the first, and for a long time the only, European to write about Kashmir in detail; the account appeared in the Amsterdam edition of his Voyages in 1699. His Kashmir chapters are the subject of Pascale Barthe's 2024 essay 'François Bernier and Nature in Kashmir: Belonging in Paradise?'.
- Traveller routeSurat
Surat framed Bernier's Indian years. He disembarked there in 1658 after a year in Cairo and a failed attempt to enter Ethiopia; he was at Surat again preparing for a journey to Persia when he met Jean Chardin in 1666; and he returned in 1668 to write a memoir on Indian commerce for Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who had recently founded the French Compagnie des Indes Orientales.
- Historical linkJean-Baptiste Tavernier
Bernier met Jean-Baptiste Tavernier in Bengal after his return from Kashmir: two Frenchmen at Aurangzeb's court in the same decade, one a physician-philosopher and the other a gem merchant. With the Mughal historians Lahori and Inayat Khan, they supply the contemporary descriptions of Shah Jahan's Peacock Throne known today; Bernier placed it in the Diwan-i-Khas, while Tavernier, Aurangzeb's guest in 1665, probably saw it in the Diwan-i-Am.
Sources
Wikipedia, "François Bernier"; "Peacock Throne". François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–1668 (1891 ed.); Pascale Barthe, "François Bernier and Nature in Kashmir: Belonging in Paradise?" (2024).
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