Édouard Chavannes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Édouard Chavannes (1865 - 1918) was a French sinologist.
He is best known for his translations from Sima Qian's Shiji (Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, 5 vol., 1895-1905), sections of the Hou Hanshu relating to the 'Western Regions', the Weilüe, his studies of Han dynasty stone carvings (La sculpture sur pierre en Chine au temps des deux dynasties Han, 1893), and for his studies of Chinese religion (Le T'ai chan: essai de monographie d'un culte chinois: appendice Le dieu du sol dans la Chine antique, 1910). The last work, a study of the worship of Mount Tai in ancient China, is a ground-breaking work of modern sinology for its combination of textual analysis and fieldwork. His students included Paul Pelliot and Marcel Granet.
Although his translations have been revised and improved significantly since then, he is one of those extraordinary "river crossers" of the years 1880-1910 that were able to touch the very heart of a civilization totally foreign at the start and make its knowledge and aesthetics well-known and accessible to western scholars.
[edit] External links
- Some of his works are available free online courtesy of the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi
