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Édouard Chavannes

January 01, 1970

Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes[a] (5 October 1865 – 29 January 1918) was a French sinologist and expert on Chinese history and religion, and is best known for his translations of major segments of Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, the work's first ever translation into a Western language.

Édouard Chavannes
Born(1865-10-05)5 October 1865
Lyon, France
Died29 January 1918(1918-01-29) (aged 52)
Paris, France
Spouse
Alice Dor
​
(m. 1891⁠–⁠1918)​
Scientific career
FieldsChinese history, religion
InstitutionsCollège de France
Academic advisorsHenri Cordier
Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys
Notable studentsPaul Demiéville, Marcel Granet, Henri Maspero, Paul Pelliot
Chinese name
Chinese沙畹
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinShā Wǎn

Chavannes was a prolific and influential scholar, and was one of the most accomplished Sinologists of the modern era notwithstanding his relatively early death at age 52 in 1918. A successor of 19th century French sinologists Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat and Stanislas Julien, Chavannes was largely responsible for the development of Sinology and Chinese scholarship into a respected field in the realm of French scholarship.[1]

Life and career edit

Édouard Chavannes was born on 5 October 1865 in Lyon, France. As a youth he studied at the lycée in Lyon, where, like most students of his era, his education focused mainly on the Latin and Greek classics. Chavannes was then sent to Paris to attend the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he and his classmates studied and prepared for the entrance exams to one of the French Grandes Écoles.[1] Chavannes passed his entrance exams and was admitted to the Lettres ("literature") section of the École Normale Supérieure in 1885.[1] Chavannes spent three years at the school, finishing in 1888 after successfully passing his agrégation in philosophy.[1]

Georges Perrot, a French archaeologist and newly appointed director of the École Normale Supérieure, advised Chavannes to begin studying China after he finished his schooling.[1] Chavannes first considered studying Chinese philosophy, which was nearer to his own educational background, but on the advice of the French scholar Henri Cordier he ultimately decided to focus on Chinese history, which up to that time had been much less widely studied in the West.[1] Chavannes began attending Classical Chinese courses given by the Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys at the Collège de France and the Mandarin Chinese classes of Maurice Jametel (1856–1889) at the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes (School of Living Oriental Languages).[1][2] Desiring to advance his studies with actual experience in China, Chavannes used the connections of certain friends of his to obtain a position as an attaché to a scientific mission associated with the French Legation in Peking (modern Beijing).[1] He departed for China in January 1889 and arrived two months later.[3] As a sinologist, Chavannes took the Chinese name Sha Wan (沙畹) and the courtesy name Zilan (滋蘭), and he also had an art name Shicheng Boshi (獅城博士, "The Doctor of Lyon").[4]

 
Chavannes and his wife, Alice Dor, during trip to Japan (c. 1892)

In 1891, Chavannes briefly returned to France where he married Alice Dor, the daughter of a well-known optometrist in Lyon, before returning to China with her.[5] Together they had a son, Fernand Henri Chavannes, who later became a highly decorated flying ace during World War I, and two daughters.[6]

Chavannes stayed in China until 1893, when he returned to France to take up the position of Professor of Chinese at the Collège de France, which had been vacated upon the death of the Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys in November 1892.[5] Although Chavannes had only been studying Chinese for five years, the quality and value of his early Chinese scholarship had already been widely recognized in the academic community, and convinced the regents of the Collège de France to give the position to him.[2] Chavannes opened his tenure with a lecture entitled "Du Rôle social de la littérature chinoise" ("On the Social Role of Chinese Literature").[7] During his tenure at the Collège, Chavannes was widely active in French academic circles: he was a member of the Institut de France, was an honorary member of a number of foreign societies, served as a French co-editor of the noted sinological journal T'oung Pao from 1904 until 1916, and was elected President of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1915.[2][8]

Chavannes's granddaughter Claire Chavannes had a son with physicist Paul Langevin's grandson Bernard Langevin: the french mathematician Remi Langevin.

Scholarship edit

 
Chavannes (c. 1905)

History edit

Chavannes' first scholarly publication, "Le Traité sur les sacrifices Fong et Chan de Se-ma Ts'ien, traduit en français" ("Sima Qian's Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices, Translated into French"), which was published in 1890 while he was in Beijing, inspired him to begin a translation of Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, the first of China's dynastic histories.[9] The first volume of the translation was published in Paris in 1895, and begins with a 249-page introduction which the German anthropologist Berthold Laufer described as "a masterpiece of historical and critical analysis... not surpassed by anything of this character written before or after him."[9] Chavannes produced four additional volumes between 1896 and 1905, covering 47 of the 130 chapters of the Records and complete with full commentary and indices. His translations also include a large number of appendices covering topics of special interests.[9]

Epigraphy edit

Chavannes was major pioneer in the field of modern epigraphy, and was praised by Berthold Laufer as "the first European scholar who approached this difficult subject with sound and critical methods and undisputed success."[8] His first epigraphical article, "Les Inscriptions des Ts'in" ("Qin Inscriptions"), was published in Journal Asiatique in 1893, which was followed later by a number of works in which Chavannes was the first Western scholar to successfully analyze and translate the unusual epigraphical style of the Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty.[8] Chavannes returned to China in 1907 to study ancient monuments and inscriptions, taking hundreds of photographs and rubbings that were published in 1909 in a large album entitled Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale (Archaeological Mission to Northern China). He published two volumes of translations and analysis of the inscription material before his death: La Sculpture à l'époque des Han (Sculpture in the Han Era), published in 1913, and La Sculpture bouddhique (Buddhist Sculpture), published in 1915.[9]

Religion edit

Chavannes was intrigued by and performed extensive research into the major religions of ancient and medieval China: Chinese folk religion, Buddhism, Daoism, Nestorian Christianity, and Manichaeism.[10] His Mémoire composé à l'époque de la grande dynastie T'ang sur les religieux éminents qui allèrent chercher la loi dans les pays d'occident par I-Tsing (Memoir Written in the Grand Tang Dynasty by Yijing on the Religious Men Who Went to Search for the Law in the Western Lands), which was published in 1894 and won the Prix Julien,[11] contains translations of the biographies and travelogues of sixty Buddhist monks who journeyed from China to India during the Tang dynasty in search of Buddhist scriptures and Sanskrit books.[10] Chavannes' best-known work on Chinese Buddhism is his three-volume work Cinq cents contes et apologues extraits du Tripiṭaka chinois (Five Hundred Tales and Fables from the Chinese Tripiṭaka).[10]

Chavannes' 1910 book Le T'ai Chan, essai de monographie d'un culte chinois (Tai Shan: Monographic Essay on a Chinese Religion), is a detailed study of the indigenous Chinese folk religion, which predates Buddhism and religious Daoism, and focuses on an ancient mountain cult centered on Mt. Tai that Chavannes visited personally.[10] This monumental work begins with introductory essays on the generally sacred role of mountains in Chinese history and culture, then examines the personality of Mt. Tai itself in great detail.[12] Chavannes includes translations of dozens of relevant passages from ancient, medieval, and pre-modern Chinese literature, including comments and passages gathered by medieval scholars Zhu Xi and Gu Yanwu.[12] His study also includes eleven translations from rubbings of stone inscriptions Chavannes made himself in temples he visited on and around Mt. Tai, as well as a detailed hand-drawn topographic map of the mountain that Chavannes drew himself.[12] Chavannes' style in Le T'ai Chan, with his annotated translations, extensive commentary, and exhaustively researched sources was inspirational and influential to later French sinologists.[13]

In 1912, Chavannes and his former student Paul Pelliot edited and translated a Chinese Manichaean treatise that Pelliot had discovered among the Dunhuang manuscripts in the Mogao caves. The book, published in Paris as Un traité manichéen retrouvé en Chine (A Manichaean Treatise Found in China), was praised by Berthold Laufer upon Chavannes' death in 1918 as "perhaps the most brilliant achievement in modern sinology."[10]

Selected works edit

  • (in French) Chavannes, Édouard (1890). "Le Traité sur les sacrifices Fong et Chan de Se-ma Ts'ien, traduit en français" ("Sima Qian's Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices, Translated into French"). Journal of the Peking Oriental Society.
  • (in French) – – – (1893). La Sculpture sur pierre en Chine au temps des deux dynasties Han (Stone Sculpture in China during the Han dynasty).
  • (in French) – – – (1894). Mémoire composé à l'époque de la grande dynastie T'ang sur les religieux éminents qui allèrent chercher la loi dans les pays d'occident par I-Tsing (Memoir Written in the Grand Tang Dynasty by I-Tsing on the Religious Men Who Went to Search for the Law in the Western Lands).
  • (in French) – – – (1895–1905). Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien traduits et annotés (The Historical Memoirs of Sima Qian, Translated and Annotated), 5 vols.
  • (in French) – – – (1902). Dix inscriptions chinoises de l'Asie centrale (Ten Chinese Inscriptions From Central Asia).
  • (in French) – – – (1903). Documents sur les Tou-kiue (Turks) occidentaux (Documents on the Western Turks).
  • (in French) – – – (1910). Le T'ai Chan, essai de monographie d'un culte chinois (Tai Shan: Monographic Essay on a Chinese Cult).
  • (in French) – – – (1910–1911). Cinq cents contes et apologues extraits du Tripiṭaka chinois (Five Hundred Tales and Fables Extracted from the Chinese Tripiṭaka), 3 vols. (A fourth volume, containing notes and indices, was published posthumously.)
  • (in French) (1913) Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale : vol.1 Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale : vol.2 Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale : vol.3 Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale : vol.4 Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale : vol.5

Notes edit

  1. ^ Birth name as given in Noël Péri's obituary of Chavannes.

References edit

Citation edit

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Péri (1918), p. 73.
  2. ^ a b c Honey (2001), p. 45.
  3. ^ Cordier (1917): 115.
  4. ^ 孙沛阳. "一枚与沙畹的字有关的印章". 澎湃新闻・上海书评.。Shicheng(獅城), which is literature meaning City of lion, it is coming from the meaning of Lyon in French.
  5. ^ a b Cordier (1917): 116.
  6. ^ de la Vallée Poussin (1918): 147.
  7. ^ Laufer (1918), p. 202.
  8. ^ a b c Laufer (1918), p. 205.
  9. ^ a b c d Laufer (1918), p. 203.
  10. ^ a b c d e Laufer (1918), p. 204.
  11. ^ Honey (2001), p. 46.
  12. ^ a b c Honey (2001), pp. 54–55.
  13. ^ Honey (2001), p. 53.

Works cited edit

  • Laufer, Berthold (1918). "Édouard Chavannes". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 38: 202–205. doi:10.2307/592605. JSTOR 592605.
  • (in French) Cordier, Henri (1917). "Nécrologie – Édouard Chavannes" ("Obituary – Édouard Chavannes"), T'oung Pao 18, pp. 114–147.
  • Honey, David B. (2001). Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology. New Haven: American Oriental Society.
  • Péri, Noël (1918), "Nécrologie – Edouard Chavannes" [Obituary – Édouard Chavannes"], Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient (in French), vol. 18, pp. 73–75
  • (in French) de la Vallée Poussin, Louis (1918). "Obituary Notice – Édouard Chavannes", Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 147–151.

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Édouard Chavannes.

January 01, 1970
Édouard, chavannes, Émmanuel, october, 1865, january, 1918, french, sinologist, expert, chinese, history, religion, best, known, translations, major, segments, sima, qian, records, grand, historian, work, first, ever, translation, into, western, language, born. Emmanuel Edouard Chavannes a 5 October 1865 29 January 1918 was a French sinologist and expert on Chinese history and religion and is best known for his translations of major segments of Sima Qian s Records of the Grand Historian the work s first ever translation into a Western language Edouard ChavannesBorn 1865 10 05 5 October 1865Lyon FranceDied29 January 1918 1918 01 29 aged 52 Paris FranceSpouseAlice Dor m 1891 1918 wbr Scientific careerFieldsChinese history religionInstitutionsCollege de FranceAcademic advisorsHenri CordierMarquis d Hervey Saint DenysNotable studentsPaul Demieville Marcel Granet Henri Maspero Paul PelliotChinese nameChinese沙畹TranscriptionsStandard MandarinHanyu PinyinSha Wǎn Chavannes was a prolific and influential scholar and was one of the most accomplished Sinologists of the modern era notwithstanding his relatively early death at age 52 in 1918 A successor of 19th century French sinologists Jean Pierre Abel Remusat and Stanislas Julien Chavannes was largely responsible for the development of Sinology and Chinese scholarship into a respected field in the realm of French scholarship 1 Contents 1 Life and career 2 Scholarship 2 1 History 2 2 Epigraphy 2 3 Religion 3 Selected works 4 Notes 5 References 5 1 Citation 5 2 Works cited 6 External linksLife and career editEdouard Chavannes was born on 5 October 1865 in Lyon France As a youth he studied at the lycee in Lyon where like most students of his era his education focused mainly on the Latin and Greek classics Chavannes was then sent to Paris to attend the prestigious Lycee Louis le Grand where he and his classmates studied and prepared for the entrance exams to one of the French Grandes Ecoles 1 Chavannes passed his entrance exams and was admitted to the Lettres literature section of the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1885 1 Chavannes spent three years at the school finishing in 1888 after successfully passing his agregation in philosophy 1 Georges Perrot a French archaeologist and newly appointed director of the Ecole Normale Superieure advised Chavannes to begin studying China after he finished his schooling 1 Chavannes first considered studying Chinese philosophy which was nearer to his own educational background but on the advice of the French scholar Henri Cordier he ultimately decided to focus on Chinese history which up to that time had been much less widely studied in the West 1 Chavannes began attending Classical Chinese courses given by the Marquis d Hervey Saint Denys at the College de France and the Mandarin Chinese classes of Maurice Jametel 1856 1889 at the Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes School of Living Oriental Languages 1 2 Desiring to advance his studies with actual experience in China Chavannes used the connections of certain friends of his to obtain a position as an attache to a scientific mission associated with the French Legation in Peking modern Beijing 1 He departed for China in January 1889 and arrived two months later 3 As a sinologist Chavannes took the Chinese name Sha Wan 沙畹 and the courtesy name Zilan 滋蘭 and he also had an art name Shicheng Boshi 獅城博士 The Doctor of Lyon 4 nbsp Chavannes and his wife Alice Dor during trip to Japan c 1892 In 1891 Chavannes briefly returned to France where he married Alice Dor the daughter of a well known optometrist in Lyon before returning to China with her 5 Together they had a son Fernand Henri Chavannes who later became a highly decorated flying ace during World War I and two daughters 6 Chavannes stayed in China until 1893 when he returned to France to take up the position of Professor of Chinese at the College de France which had been vacated upon the death of the Marquis d Hervey Saint Denys in November 1892 5 Although Chavannes had only been studying Chinese for five years the quality and value of his early Chinese scholarship had already been widely recognized in the academic community and convinced the regents of the College de France to give the position to him 2 Chavannes opened his tenure with a lecture entitled Du Role social de la litterature chinoise On the Social Role of Chinese Literature 7 During his tenure at the College Chavannes was widely active in French academic circles he was a member of the Institut de France was an honorary member of a number of foreign societies served as a French co editor of the noted sinological journal T oung Pao from 1904 until 1916 and was elected President of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1915 2 8 Chavannes s granddaughter Claire Chavannes had a son with physicist Paul Langevin s grandson Bernard Langevin the french mathematician Remi Langevin Scholarship edit nbsp Chavannes c 1905 History edit Chavannes first scholarly publication Le Traite sur les sacrifices Fong et Chan de Se ma Ts ien traduit en francais Sima Qian s Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices Translated into French which was published in 1890 while he was in Beijing inspired him to begin a translation of Sima Qian s Records of the Grand Historian the first of China s dynastic histories 9 The first volume of the translation was published in Paris in 1895 and begins with a 249 page introduction which the German anthropologist Berthold Laufer described as a masterpiece of historical and critical analysis not surpassed by anything of this character written before or after him 9 Chavannes produced four additional volumes between 1896 and 1905 covering 47 of the 130 chapters of the Records and complete with full commentary and indices His translations also include a large number of appendices covering topics of special interests 9 Epigraphy edit Chavannes was major pioneer in the field of modern epigraphy and was praised by Berthold Laufer as the first European scholar who approached this difficult subject with sound and critical methods and undisputed success 8 His first epigraphical article Les Inscriptions des Ts in Qin Inscriptions was published in Journal Asiatique in 1893 which was followed later by a number of works in which Chavannes was the first Western scholar to successfully analyze and translate the unusual epigraphical style of the Mongol ruled Yuan dynasty 8 Chavannes returned to China in 1907 to study ancient monuments and inscriptions taking hundreds of photographs and rubbings that were published in 1909 in a large album entitled Mission archeologique dans la Chine septentrionale Archaeological Mission to Northern China He published two volumes of translations and analysis of the inscription material before his death La Sculpture a l epoque des Han Sculpture in the Han Era published in 1913 and La Sculpture bouddhique Buddhist Sculpture published in 1915 9 Religion edit Chavannes was intrigued by and performed extensive research into the major religions of ancient and medieval China Chinese folk religion Buddhism Daoism Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism 10 His Memoire compose a l epoque de la grande dynastie T ang sur les religieux eminents qui allerent chercher la loi dans les pays d occident par I Tsing Memoir Written in the Grand Tang Dynasty by Yijing on the Religious Men Who Went to Search for the Law in the Western Lands which was published in 1894 and won the Prix Julien 11 contains translations of the biographies and travelogues of sixty Buddhist monks who journeyed from China to India during the Tang dynasty in search of Buddhist scriptures and Sanskrit books 10 Chavannes best known work on Chinese Buddhism is his three volume work Cinq cents contes et apologues extraits du Tripiṭaka chinois Five Hundred Tales and Fables from the Chinese Tripiṭaka 10 Chavannes 1910 book Le T ai Chan essai de monographie d un culte chinois Tai Shan Monographic Essay on a Chinese Religion is a detailed study of the indigenous Chinese folk religion which predates Buddhism and religious Daoism and focuses on an ancient mountain cult centered on Mt Tai that Chavannes visited personally 10 This monumental work begins with introductory essays on the generally sacred role of mountains in Chinese history and culture then examines the personality of Mt Tai itself in great detail 12 Chavannes includes translations of dozens of relevant passages from ancient medieval and pre modern Chinese literature including comments and passages gathered by medieval scholars Zhu Xi and Gu Yanwu 12 His study also includes eleven translations from rubbings of stone inscriptions Chavannes made himself in temples he visited on and around Mt Tai as well as a detailed hand drawn topographic map of the mountain that Chavannes drew himself 12 Chavannes style in Le T ai Chan with his annotated translations extensive commentary and exhaustively researched sources was inspirational and influential to later French sinologists 13 In 1912 Chavannes and his former student Paul Pelliot edited and translated a Chinese Manichaean treatise that Pelliot had discovered among the Dunhuang manuscripts in the Mogao caves The book published in Paris as Un traite manicheen retrouve en Chine A Manichaean Treatise Found in China was praised by Berthold Laufer upon Chavannes death in 1918 as perhaps the most brilliant achievement in modern sinology 10 Selected works edit in French Chavannes Edouard 1890 Le Traite sur les sacrifices Fong et Chan de Se ma Ts ien traduit en francais Sima Qian s Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices Translated into French Journal of the Peking Oriental Society in French 1893 La Sculpture sur pierre en Chine au temps des deux dynasties Han Stone Sculpture in China during the Han dynasty in French 1894 Memoire compose a l epoque de la grande dynastie T ang sur les religieux eminents qui allerent chercher la loi dans les pays d occident par I Tsing Memoir Written in the Grand Tang Dynasty by I Tsing on the Religious Men Who Went to Search for the Law in the Western Lands in French 1895 1905 Les Memoires historiques de Se ma Ts ien traduits et annotes The Historical Memoirs of Sima Qian Translated and Annotated 5 vols in French 1902 Dix inscriptions chinoises de l Asie centrale Ten Chinese Inscriptions From Central Asia in French 1903 Documents sur les Tou kiue Turks occidentaux Documents on the Western Turks in French 1910 Le T ai Chan essai de monographie d un culte chinois Tai Shan Monographic Essay on a Chinese Cult in French 1910 1911 Cinq cents contes et apologues extraits du Tripiṭaka chinois Five Hundred Tales and Fables Extracted from the Chinese Tripiṭaka 3 vols A fourth volume containing notes and indices was published posthumously in French 1913 Mission archeologique dans la Chine septentrionale vol 1 Mission archeologique dans la Chine septentrionale vol 2 Mission archeologique dans la Chine septentrionale vol 3 Mission archeologique dans la Chine septentrionale vol 4 Mission archeologique dans la Chine septentrionale vol 5Notes edit Birth name as given in Noel Peri s obituary of Chavannes References editCitation edit a b c d e f g h Peri 1918 p 73 a b c Honey 2001 p 45 Cordier 1917 115 孙沛阳 一枚与沙畹的字有关的印章 澎湃新闻 上海书评 Shicheng 獅城 which is literature meaning City of lion it is coming from the meaning of Lyon in French a b Cordier 1917 116 de la Vallee Poussin 1918 147 Laufer 1918 p 202 a b c Laufer 1918 p 205 a b c d Laufer 1918 p 203 a b c d e Laufer 1918 p 204 Honey 2001 p 46 a b c Honey 2001 pp 54 55 Honey 2001 p 53 Works cited edit Laufer Berthold 1918 Edouard Chavannes Journal of the American Oriental Society 38 202 205 doi 10 2307 592605 JSTOR 592605 in French Cordier Henri 1917 Necrologie Edouard Chavannes Obituary Edouard Chavannes T oung Pao 18 pp 114 147 Honey David B 2001 Incense at the Altar Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology New Haven American Oriental Society Peri Noel 1918 Necrologie Edouard Chavannes Obituary Edouard Chavannes Bulletin de l Ecole francaise d Extreme Orient in French vol 18 pp 73 75 in French de la Vallee Poussin Louis 1918 Obituary Notice Edouard Chavannes Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies University of London vol 1 no 2 pp 147 151 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edouard Chavannes Certain works and translations are available at the site of the Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi Xi Tujue Shiliao by Shawan Portals nbsp France nbsp China nbsp Biography Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Edouard Chavannes amp oldid 1221485063, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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