LEVI, SYLVAIN

born March 28, 1863, Paris died Oct. 30, 1935, Paris French Orientalist who wrote on Eastern religion, literature, and history and is particularly noted for his dictionary of Buddhism. Appointed a lecturer at the school of higher studies in Paris (1886), he taught Sanskrit at the Sorbonne (188994) and wrote his doctoral dissertation, Le Thtre indien (1890; The Indian Theatre), which became a standard treatise on the subject. After his appointment as professor at the Collge de France (18941935), he toured India and Japan (1897 and 1898) and published La Doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brhmanas (1898; The Doctrine of Sacrifice in the Brahmanas). Another book resulting from these travels was Le Npal: tude historique d'un royaume hindou, 3 vol. (190508; Nepal: Historical Study of a Hindu Kingdom). In L'Inde et le monde (1926; India and the World), he discussed India's role among nations. Subsequent travels to East Asia (192123) generated his major work, Hbgirin. Dictionnaire du Bouddhisme d'aprs les sources chinoises et japonaises (1929; Hobogirin. Dictionary of Buddhism Based on Chinese and Japanese Sources), produced in collaboration with the Japanese Buddhist scholar Takakusu Junjiro. Lvi also worked with the French linguist Antoine Meillet on pioneer studies of the Tocharian languages spoken in Chinese Turkistan in the 1st millennium AD. He determined the dates of texts in Tocharian B and published Fragments de textes koutchens . . . (1933; Fragments of Texts from Kucha).