Memorial Sylvain Levi (Vol. 1): Landmarks in Indology

These fortythree papers of Sylvain Levi brought together by the good offices if Louis Renou, fall into two groups: in the one, essays, lectures, course resumes and travel reports which, though without doubt scholarly works, address an audience larger that that of the specialist; in the other, erudite articles in which palegraphy, epigraphy and philology directly contribute their methods and materials towards a history of the civilization and thought of the Indian world. This collection which contains only a very small part of Sylvain Levi’s oeuvre, provides however a faithful picture of it. One sees in it the ardent desire animating him to convey to the Occident Indian humanity. One observes also the quite predominant, but not exclusive, position that Buddhism in all its aspects occupies in his work. The topics relating to Indian Buddhism are treated in such a way as to demonstrate that in the light of the Buddhist data ancient India appears less closed-in on itself than generally assumed and that it was open to exchange, notably marine, In addition, this Memorial presents a sample of Sylvian Levi’s contribution to Tocharian studies, his inventory of Japanese Buddhist sects and also a note on the ancient Indo-Hebrew contacts.