Lassen, CHRISTIAN, orientalist, was born on 22d October 1800, at Bergen, in Norway, and studied at Christiania, Heidelberg, and Bonn. He assisted Schlegel in the publication of the Râmâyana and
Hitopadesa, and translated into Latin Jayadeva's Gitagovinda. He also associated himself with Eugène Burnouf in the Essai sur le Pali (Paris, 1826). In 1830 he became extra-ordinary and in 1840 ordinary professor of Ancient Indian Languages and Literature at Bonn, and taught there until disabled by blindness in 1864. He edited many Sanskrit works, deeply investigated the relations of the oriental languages and antiquities, and published several very important books. Amongst them are works on Persian Cuneiforms (1836 and 1845); on the Greek Kings in Bactria (1838); Institutiones Linguae Pracriticae (1837); his great work on Indische Alterthumskunde, a critical history of Indian civilisation (1844-61; new ed. 1867-74), &c. He has contributed much to our knowledge of the cuneiform inscriptions, of the inscriptions of ancient Italy, and of the ancient and modern Iranian dialects. He was one of the co-founders of the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes. Lassen died at Bonn, 9th May 1876.