634. 



, 



AN EPISODE OF MAHABHARATA. 



ONE of the most illustrious victims of the cholera in the capital of 

 France, has been M. Antoine Leonard Chezy, of the Academic des In- 

 scriptions. His death cannot fail to be regarded as a very serious loss 

 to the cause of Oriental erudition. He had studied Arabic and Persian 

 under the venerable Silvestre de Sacy, who, after an intimacy of forty 

 years, pronounced an affectionate eulogium over that grave, into which, 

 with so many of his learned and scientific brethren, he has since de- 

 scended, at the behest of the same inexorable messenger. 



M. de Chezy studied Sanscrit without a master, and made such pro- 

 gress in it, that in 1814, a professorship of that language was created 

 for him at the College of France. Ten years afterwards he was ap- 

 pointed to the chair of Persian, in the school for the living oriental 

 languages at the King's Library, which had become vacant by the death 

 of M. Langles. His great ambition was to be appointed Conservator of 

 Oriental manuscripts at the Bibliotheque du Roi, and it is supposed that 

 the shock he experienced when that appointment was given to M. Abel 

 Remusat, contributed in no small degree to the fatal termination of his 

 illness. .; > t lhl[jj'i ^niod SB// orf iloifiw ni 3la-j scfor- 



The last of his literary labours was the translation of the Sanscrit 

 and Pracrit drama of Calidasa,* called the Recognition of Saccountala, 

 from a manuscript believed to be unique, in the collection of the King's 

 Library. Attached to that manuscript, as an appendix, is the Episode 

 of Mahabharata, which is now for the first time presented to the Eng- 

 lish reader. This epic poem, so celebrated in Eastern literature, is 

 ascribed to Vya'sa, an inspired writer long anterior to Calidasa, who 

 flourished at the Court of Vicramaditya, one of the greatest sovereigns 

 of India, in the century which preceded the Christian era. Calidasa 

 was thus the contemporary of Virgil, and it was with this episode, as 

 his theme, that he produced his celebrated drama, the Recognition of 

 Saccountala. 



At his death, M. de Chezy had just attained his sixtieth year. Be- 

 sides being of the Academy of Inscriptions, he was one of the editors of 

 the Journal des Savans, and it is to him we owe 1st. Medjnoun and 

 Leila, a poem translated from the Persian of Djami ; 2dly, The Death 

 of Yadjnadatti, an episode from the Sanscrit; and 3dly, the Recogni- 

 tion of Saccountala. 



The character of M. de Chezy is thus given by one of his surviving 

 friends : " II etait un honnete homme, un homme d'esprit et un savant 

 aimable;" and the following extract is taken from the funeral oration of 

 the Baron de Sacy, who so speedily folio wed the most distinguished of 

 his pupils : 



" It is not here the place, or now the moment; to dwell on the labours 

 which, together with the duties of his situation, occupied all the mo- 

 ments of M. de Chezy ; or for the last years of his life, at least the 

 intervals of health granted him by a constitution enfeebled by chagrin 

 and severe infirmities. The very nature of these labours, in which ele- 

 gance and delicacy of style contend with profound science^and erudition, 



* Calisada is the author of the Megha Dutfc, or Cloud Messenger, a poem in 

 Sanscrit, translated by Dr. Wilson, recently appointed Oriental^Professor at Oxford. 



