James Darmesteter
James Darmesteter (28 March 1849 – 19 October 1894) was a French author, orientalist, and antiquarian.
Biography
He was born of Jewish parents at Château-Salins, in Alsace. The family name had originated in their earlier home of Darmstadt. He was educated in Paris, where, under the guidance of Michel Bréal and Abel Bergaigne, he imbibed a love for Oriental studies, to which for a time he entirely devoted himself. In 1875 he published a thesis on the mythology of the Avesta, in which he advocated that the Persan religion of zoroastrianism had been influenced by Judaism (and not backwards as many scholars say).[1] In 1877 became teacher of Persian language at the École des Hautes Études. He continued his research with his Études iraniennes (1883), and ten years later published a complete translation of the Avesta and associated Zend (lit. "commentary"), with historical and philological commentary of his own (Zend Avesta, 3 vols., 1892–1893) in the Annales du Musée Guimet. He also edited the Avesta for Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East series (vols. 4 and 23).
There is an éloge of James Darmesteter in the Journal asiatique (1894, vol. iv., pp. 519–534), and a notice by Henri Cordier, with a list of his writings, in The Royal Asiatic Society's Journal (January 1895); see also Gaston Paris, "James Darmesteter," in Penseurs et poètes (1896), (pp. 1–61).
Notes
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Darmesteter, James". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press
External links
- Works related to James Darmesteter at Wikisource
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