Release date is 2026-02-21

Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

"Dans l'Inde (de Ceylan au Népal)" by Désirée Sylvain-Lévi is a travelogue written in the early 20th century. It traces a journey from Ceylon through India toward Nepal, blending vivid travel impressions with keen observations of religion, art, education, and the colonial politics of the Non-Cooperation era, especially around Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan. The focus is on landscapes, temples, daily life, and encounters with scholars, monks, artists, and reformers seen by a perceptive French traveler accompanying a Sanskritist.

The opening of the book follows the narrator’s arrival in Ceylon, quick impressions of Colombo and Kandy, and a move to southern India where the living temples of Madura overwhelm her imagination. She then reaches Calcutta and, above all, Santiniketan, where Tagore greets them with songs, sandal paste, and garlands, and classes meet under trees. Settling into simple quarters, she teaches French while her companion gives Sanskrit and Buddhist lectures; they meet Buddhist monks from Ceylon, sympathetic English residents, and the Tagore family circle, and observe village life and Santal customs. Practical details—servants, food, insects, heat—and moonlit ceremonies mingle with sharp sketches of people and places. As hartals and boycotts rise around the Prince of Wales’s visit, she sketches the tension between Gandhi’s ascetic program and Tagore’s humanist internationalism, a brief sojourn in Calcutta society, and a return for Santiniketan’s fair and the inauguration of its international university. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Paris: F. Rieder et Cie, 1925