Darmesteter, JAMES

Darmesteter, JAMES, orientalist, was born in 1849 at Château-Salins (in the part of Lorraine now German), of a Jewish family originally—as the name indicates—from Darmstadt. He was educated at Paris, in 1875 wrote a thesis on the Avesta, crowned by the Institute, and became a conspicuous member of the Société Asiatique. He was professor of Zend at the École des Hautes Études (1877) and at the Collège de France (1885). In 1883 he published Études Iraniennes, followed by works on the Mahdi, on Persian popular poetry, and on Afghan folk-songs (the fruits of a government mission to India). His principal works were a series of books on the Zend-Avesta, including a translation of the great part of it in The Sacred Books of the East. He held that much of the Avesta has a late origin (see ZEND). In a volume on the Hebrew Prophets, he advocated a return to Hebrew monotheism. He also wrote Essais de Littérature Anglaise, edited two volumes of philological articles by his brother Arsène, and translated into rhythmical French a selection of his wife's poems. He died 19th October 1894. His wife, née Agnes Mary F. Robinson in 1857, has written a long series of books of admirable poetry, lyrical and other, translations from Euripides, a novel (Ardén), and Lives of Emily Brontë (1883) and Renan (1897).—ARSENE (1846-88), trained to be a rabbi, passed to the study of mediæval French, in which he soon became the recognised authority; and began the great dictionary in collaboration with M. Hatzfeld.