TRANSFORMATION IN SANSKRIT STUDIES 101 



mans, still remained the privilege of the English of India; Europe 

 possessed neither books, grammars, nor dictionaries. However, the 

 Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris possessed a collection of Sanskrit 

 manuscripts and some clumsy rudiments of grammar due to the 

 missionaries. Fascinated, like so many others, by reading Cakuntald, 

 Che"zy determined to go back, at any cost, to the original. A worthy 

 rival of the first humanists of the Renaissance, he set to work alone 

 to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit. Che"zy was the son of a distin- 

 guished engineer, and destined originally for his father's profession. 

 It was not long before he deserted the too stern science of mathe- 

 matics for the kindly companionship of the Eastern muses. In him 

 an extreme sensibility was united with firmness and method; a 

 fortunate facility made the study of languages mere sport to him. 

 He became the pupil of Sacy and Langles, and was a master of his 

 subject at twenty years of age. He had been appointed to take part 

 in the labors of the Egyptian mission, but was stopped at Toulon by 

 illness. He returned to Paris to seek consolation in the Library 

 among the Oriental manuscripts. The story of his gropings and 

 success has the poignant interest of a drama in which science is at 

 stake; it was not even without a tragic catastrophe by which he lost 

 the sweet and precious peace of home life. He was forced to sacrifice 

 his conjugal happiness to the jealous demands of research, but his 

 obstinate enthusiasm did not falter; twenty-five years later, arrived 

 at the goal of his efforts, but overwhelmed with sorrows and filled 

 with bitterness, he crowned the six hundred and fifty pages of the 

 quarto volume, in which he had at last published the text of Cakuntald^ 

 with this verse of Walter Scott, where he breathes out his very soul: 

 " That I o'erlive such woes, Enchantress, is thine own! " 



I have not been able to resist giving in detail the first steps of this 

 heroic pioneer, to whom I may be allowed to offer homage here, as 

 a Frenchman, as a forerunner, and my own predecessor. It is Ch6zy's 

 chair which I now occupy at the College de France. " On the 29th of 

 November in the year of grace 1814 and the twentieth of the reign, J> 

 an ordinance of Louis XVIII, signed " at his royal chateau of the 

 Tuileries, " created at the same time two new chairs in the College 

 de France; one, to which Antoine Leonard de Che"zy was appointed, 

 was for the teaching of the Sanskrit language and literature; the 

 other, for the Chinese language and literature, was first occupied 

 by Abel Re'musat. Silvestre de Sacy, the recognized head of French 

 Orientalism, pompously thanked " Louis-le-De*sireY ' " through whom 

 letters flourished under the aegis of peace, in the shade of Minerva's 

 olive-tree." A less fervent royalist might have enjoyed recording 

 that the ancien regime was no sooner restored but it found itself 

 compelled to give its countenance, at the outset, to the conquests 



