Alfred Foucher

Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher (21 Nov. 1865, Lorient — 30 Oct. 1952, Sceaux, France) was a French archaeologist, philologist, art and religion historian specialized in Buddhist iconography, a member of the French Société Asiatique and the Commission archéologique de l’Indochine, and the Deputy Director of EFEO in Hanoi from 1902 to 1904, then Director until 1907.

With famous Sanskritists Abel Bergaigne (1838−1888) and Sylvain Lévi (1863−1935) as mentors, he developed a lengthy career as an academic (professor at Ecole Pratique des Hautes études and Sorbonne University) and an indefatigable traveling archaeologist, working in Java, Afghanistan, Iran, India, Japan, lecturing at many universities worldwide, from Harvard to Lahore. He was a close friend of archaeologist Louis Finot, and of German and Dutch Indianists and archaeologists. After his 1884 dissertation ​‘Les scenes figurées de la légende du Buddha’, he accumulated a remarkable knowledge on Buddhist iconography and art. His doctoral thesis in 1905 was titled L’art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhâra. 

Albert Foucher visited several times the site of Angkor in the early 1900s, both for EFEO and for the Commission archéologique de l’Indochine, and was commissionned to study the collection of Khmer antiquities kept by Jean Moura at his Moissac house after his death in 1885. In Sept. 1904, Foucher delivered the eulogy of young archaeologist Charles Carpeaux after his premature death from illnesss. He went back to Angkor with his wife in December 1925, In a 1926 conference in Tokyo, titled ​“Une récente visite aux ruines d’Angkor et les antiquités bouddhiques du Cambodge”, he talked about his findings during that visit. 

On 14 Feb. 1919, Alfred Foucher married in Colombo (Sri Lanka) Eugénie ​‘Ena’ Bazin (7 Oct. 1889 – 30 Jan. 1952), whom he had met during her studies at Sorbonne University, where she majored in English with a dissertation on Rabindranath Tagore. Together, they traveled and published extensively during the following decades, in particular La vieille route de l’Inde de Bactres à Taxila, Paris, 1942 – 1947.

Fluent in Parsi and Hindi, Ena Bazin-Foucher was able to converse with Queen Soraya Tarzi of Afghanistan without the help of an interpreter. She assisted him through his mission for the Archaeological Survey of India. Later on, Alfred Foucher would be a resolute promoter of young female archaeologists and orientalists in this rather male-chauvinistic milieu.

Ena Bazin-Foucher and Alfred Foucher in Kushinagar, India, 1920 (from Annick Fenet, ​“De la Sorbonne à l’Asie. Routes orientalistes d’Ena Bazin-Foucher (1889−1952)”, in Voyageuses et histoire(s) 2/2, Fall 2011).

Select Publications

[based on Annick Fenet, ​“L’oeuvre écrite d’Alfred Foucher et d’Eugénie Bazin-Foucher: Bibliographies inédites et commentées”, in Bouddhismes d’Asie: Monuments et Littératures, Journée d’étude en hommage à Alfred Foucher (1865−1952) réunie le 14 décembre 2007 à I’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (palais de l’lnstitut de France), Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat et Jean Leclant eds., Paris, AIBL — Diffusion De Boccard, 2009).]
 

• [transl. from German] H. Oldenberg, Le Bouddha, sa vie, sa doctrine, sa communauté, Paris, 1894, vii-392 p. [preface by Sylvain Lévi].
• “Rapport à M. le Gouverneur général sur les travaux de l’École française
  d’Extrême-Orient pendant l’année 1901”, BEFEO II, 1902: 33 – 442.
• “Siam”, BEFEO II, 1902: 227 – 228 [note on some Bangkok monuments].
• “Note sur les travaux de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient (1899−1902)”,
  Verhandlungen des XIII. internationalen orientalisten-kongresses (Hamburg, September 1902), Leiden, 1904: 88 – 90.
• “Les ruines d’Angkor”, Bulletin du Comité de l’Asie française (BCAF) VIII, 1908: 49 – 55. [with illustrations from de Beylie’s L’architecture hindoue and photos of Angkor Thom provided by Charles Carpeaux: see ADB scan].
• “Conférence de M. A. Foucher” [sur les monuments d’Angkor, Sorbonne], Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (BACTHS)1912: ciii-civ.
• “Le couple tutélaire dans la Gaule et dans l’Inde”, Revue archéologique II‑2, 1912: 341 – 349. [ENG transl.] ​“The Tutelary Pair in Gaul and in India”, in The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and other essays in Indian and Central Asian archaeology, revised by the author and translated by Miss L. A. Thomas et F. W. Thomas with a preface by the later [sic], Paris-Londres, 1917, xvi-316 p.
• “Matériaux pour servir à l’étude de l’art khmèr”, Bulletin de la Commission archéologique de l’Indochine (BCAI) 1912, p. 215 – 218, pl. x‑xiv. [“I. Bronzes”, ​“II. Deux têtes de statues en pierre”]; cont. BCAI 1913, p. 93 – 103, pl. i‑viii. [“III. La collection Moura” , ​“IV. Une statue du Buddha” [discovered by Jean Commaille].]. Offprint 1914. 
• Études sur l’art bouddhique de l’Inde, Tokyo, s.d., FR/JP, 88 – 149 p. [compendium of abstracts of conferences given in Japon in 1926, including ​“La première image du Buddha: ses origines, son berceau, sa date”, [p. 51 – 68] and ​“Une récente visite aux ruines d’Angkor et les antiquités bouddhiques du Cambodge” [p. 69 – 88].
• “Rapport sur les travaux de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient de 1926 à
  1930”, Comptes-rendus de l’Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (CRAI) 1931: 211 – 220.
• [with Sir John Marshall, Director ASI 1902 – 1908] The monuments of Sanchi, with the texts of inscriptions edited, translated and annoted by N. G. Majumdar, Calcutta, 1939, 3 vol. (1 text (23 p.), 2 vol. of plates, 396, 32 p.) [This collaboration, relatively uncommon between French and English archaeologists in the world of archaeology before WWII, was dedicated ​“To the Memory of Her Highness Nawab Sultan Jehan Begam Sahiba, Late Ruler of Bhopal.”]. 
• [in collab. with Mme E. Bazin-Foucher] La vieille route de l’Inde de
  Bactres à Taxila, Paris, 1942 – 1947 (vol. I. Introduction, 1re et 2e parties, 1942 ; vol. II. 3e partie, appendices, 1947) (Mémoires de la DAFA I) viii-426 p.
• Les vies antérieures du Bouddha d’après les textes et les monuments de l’Inde. Choix de contes présentés par A. Foucher, Membre de l’Institut, et illustrés par Janine Auboyer, Conservateur au Musée Guimet, Paris, 1955 (Publications du Musée Guimet. Bibliothèque de diffusion LXI), 370 p.