CALMETTE, JEAN. - Missionary and Indologist, b. at Rodez (Aveyron, France) on 5 May 1693, d. in February 1740. A Jesuit in 1709, he left for India, where he arrived at Pondichéry in 1726. His activity was carried out entirely in Telugu country.
Fr. C. distinguished himself through his knowledge of the Sanskrit language: he was the first to succeed in obtaining the text of the four Veda, sacred books which the Brahmins jealously concealed; the copies he had made are preserved in the National Library of Paris. But these texts have nothing to do with the Écour Vedam, in which Voltaire believed he had found arguments against Christianity and which is a common fraud: the names of Frs. de Nobili and C. have wrongly been invoked in this matter.
Some letters of C. are printed in the Lettres édificantes; Fr. P. Dahmen published: Extraits de lettres inédites du p. J. C. S. I., missionnaire dans l'Inde, in Revue d'histoire des missions, 2 (1934), pp. 109-25.