Antoine-Léonard de Chézy

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

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

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, though he possessed no grammar or dictionary, and succeeded in obtaining 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
• Louis-Mathieu Langlès

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Catholic Encyclopedia article