Antoine-Léonard de Chézy

Antoine-Léonard de Chézy (15 January 1773 – 31 August 1832) was a French orientalist.

File:Antoine-Léonard Chézy - Yajnadattabada.jpg

Title page of Yajnadattabada, translated by Antoine-Léonard Chézy.

Biography

He was born at Neuilly. His father, Antoine de Chézy (1718–1798), was an engineer who finally became director of the École des Ponts et Chaussées. The son was intended for his father's profession; but in 1799 he obtained a post in the oriental department of the national library. In about 1803, he began studying Sanskrit, and although he possessed no grammar or dictionary, he succeeded in acquiring sufficient knowledge of the language to be able to compose poetry in it. He was the first professor of Sanskrit appointed in the Collège de France (1815), a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions. Among his works were:

• Medjouin et Leila (1807), from the Persian
• Yadjanadatta Badha (1814)
• La Reconnaissance de Sacountala (1830), from the Sanskrit
• L'Anthologie érotique d'Amrou (1831), published under the pseudonym d'Apudy.

See the Mémoires of the Académie des Inscriptions (new series, vol. xii.), where there is a notice of Chézy by Silvestre de Sacy.

See also

• Chézy (disambiguation)
• Louis-Mathieu Langlès

References

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