François Bernier (1620–1688) physician to Mughal prince Dara Shikoh

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François Bernier (25 September 1620 – 22 September 1688) was a French physician and traveller. He was born at Joué-Etiau in Anjou. He was briefly personal physician to Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (28 October 1615 – 30 August 1659), the eldest son of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, and after Dara Shikoh's demise, was attached to the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (14 October 1618 – 20 February 1707), for around 12 years during his stay in India.

His 1684 publication Nouvelle division de la terre par les différentes espèces ou races qui l'habitent (A new division of the Earth) is considered the first published post-Classical classification of humans into distinct races. He also wrote Travels in the Mughal Empire, which is mainly about the reigns of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb. It is based on his own extensive journeys and observations, and on information from eminent Mughal courtiers who had witnessed the events at first hand.

Bernier abridged and translated the philosophical writings of his friend Pierre Gassendi from Latin into French. Initial editions of Bernier's Abregé de la Philosophie de Gassendi were published in Paris in 1674 by the family Langlois and in 1675 by Estienne Michallet. A complete edition in eight volumes was published by Anisson and Posuel at Lyon in 1678; Anisson and Posuel joined with Rigaud to publish a second edition in seven volumes in 1684. Bernier objectively and faithfully rendered Gassendi's ideas in his Abregé, without editorial interjection or invention. However, Bernier remained uncomfortable with some of Gassendi's notions: in 1682, Estienne Michallet was again his publisher, putting forth his Doutes de Mr. Bernier sur quelques-uns des principaux Chapitres de son Abregé de la Philosophie de Gassendi.


A son of a farmer, François Bernier, was orphaned very young and was cared for by his uncle, the curé de Chanzeaux. At the age of 15, he moved to Paris to study at the Collège de Clermont (the future Lycée Louis-le-Grand) where he was invited to stay at the home of his younger friend Chapelle, the natural son of Luillier who was a councillor at the parlement in Metz. There Bernier most probably met Cyrano de Bergerac and Molière, and certainly the philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), whose aide and secretary he became. He developed a taste for travel (1647) in the company of monsieur d'Arpajon, the French ambassador to Poland and Germany.

In 1652 during a prolonged stay with Gassendi in the south of France, he managed to become a medical doctor on the strength of a speed-course at the famous Faculté de Montpellier: an intensive three-month course gave the medical degree providing one did not practice on French national territory.

Liberated from his ties to France by the death of Gassendi in 1655, he set out on his twelve-year journey to the East, at 36 years of age: Palestine, Egypt, one year in Cairo, Arabia, and an attempt to enter Ethiopia which was frustrated by civil war in the interior. In 1658 he debarked at Surat in India, in Gujarat state. Attached at first and for a short while to the retinue of Dara Shikoh—the history of whose downfall he was to record—he was installed as a medical doctor at the court of Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughal emperors.

A tour of inspection by Aurangzeb (1664–65) gave Bernier the opportunity to describe Kashmir, the first and for a long time the only European to do so. In: "Voyages de F. Bernier (angevin) contenant la description des Etats du Grand Mogol, de l'Indoustan, du royaume de Kachemire" (David-Paul Maret ed., Amsterdam, 1699). He subsequently visited the other extreme of the empire in Bengal. European medical training was highly esteemed amongst the Mughal and gave him access to all ranks of the court, even on medically required occasions to the Emperor's harem.

After his return from Kashmir, he traveled around on his own, meeting with Jean-Baptiste Tavernier in Bengal and—while preparing for a journey to Persia at Surat—with Jean Chardin, that other great traveler in the Orient (1666).

He returned once more to Surat (1668) to write a memoir on Indian commerce for the use of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (who recently had founded La Compagnie des Indes Orientales). In 1669 Bernier left India for Paris, to stay.

In 1671 he almost was jailed for writing in defense of the ideas of René Descartes, against whom a judicial arrest had been issued—an exploit he followed with an "Abrégé de la Philosophie de Gassendi", also not a subject to arouse official approval (1674).

Meanwhile he was a favored guest at some of the great literary salons, for example that of Marguerite de la Sablière, who introduced him to Jean de La Fontaine; or at that of Ninon de Lenclos. (His much-debated text on "races" -- "A New Division of the Earth" [1], of which the second half is dedicated to feminine beauty—may be read against this background.)

In 1685 Bernier visited London where he met with some famous exiles from France: Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin, niece of the redoubtable Cardinal; Saint-Évremond; others. He returned to Paris via the Netherlands, where he probably visited his philosophical correspondent Pierre Bayle.

Bernier died in 1688, the year that saw the publication of his "Lettre sur le quiétisme des Indes". (see note: Talk:Idries Shah#The Way of the Scholar)

Foremost among his correspondents while he was in India had been Jean Chapelain, who shipped him crates of books, Melchisédech Thévenot, and François de La Mothe Le Vayer. From Chapelain's correspondence we know of a link with the elder Pétis de la Croix, whose son François Pétis de la Croix was sent on a language course to Persia two years after Bernier's return from India.

Note: this description of the life of François Bernier is abstracted from a French introduction by France Bhattacharya to an edition of "Voyage dans les Etats du Grand Mogol" (Paris: Fayard, 1981).