author
Delphine Menant
b. 1850
A French explorer and ethnologist, she is best known for her firsthand study of Parsi life in India at the turn of the twentieth century. Her work brought careful, readable attention to a community that was little known to many European readers.
3 Audiobooks
De monumenten van den Girnar De Aarde en haar Volken, 1907
by Delphine Menant
Bij de Parsi's van Bombay en Gudsjerat De Aarde en haar Volken, 1909-1910
by Delphine Menant
Les Parsis
by Delphine Menant
About the author
Born in Cherbourg in 1850, Delphine Menant was a French ethnologist and explorer. Sources consistently describe her as the daughter of the Assyriologist Joachim Menant, and as a student of the scholar James Darmesteter, which helps explain her strong interest in Persian and Zoroastrian subjects.
In 1900, she traveled to India on a mission connected with the Guimet Museum to study the Parsis, especially in Bombay and Gujarat. That research shaped the work she is best remembered for, including Les Parsis and its English version, The Parsis in India, which introduced many readers to Parsi history, beliefs, and everyday life.
She died in Paris in 1932. Although she is not widely known today, her writing still stands out as an early effort to document a living community through travel, observation, and sustained cultural study.