Antoine Leonard de Chézy

Antoine Leonard de Chézy (January 15, 1773 - 1832), was a French orientalist.

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 1709 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 College de France (1815), a chevalier of the Legion 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.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.