DARMESTETER, JAMES 0849-1894), French author and antiquarian, was born of Jewish parents at Chateau Salins. Alsace. The family name had originated in their earlier home of Darmstadt. He studied in Paris under Michel Breal and Abel Bergaigne. In 1875 he published a thesis on the mythology of the Zend Avesta, and in 1877 became teacher of Zend at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. He followed up his researches with his Etudes iraniennes (1883), and ten years later published a complete trans lation of the Zend Avesta, with historical and philological com mentary (3 vols., 1892-93), in the Annales du musee Guimet. He also edited the Zend Avesta for Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East. Darmesteter regarded the extant texts as far more recent than was commonly believed, placing the earliest in the 1st century B.C., and the bulk in the 3rd century A.D. In 1885 he was appointed professor in the College de France, and was sent to India in 1886 on a mission to collect the popular songs of the Afghans, a translation of which, with a valuable essay on the Afghan language and literature, he published on his return. His impressions of English dominion in India were conveyed in Lettres sur l'Inde (1888). He married A. Mary F. Robinson (see DUCLAUX, MARY). He died on Oct. 19, There is an doge of James Darmesteter in the Journal asiatique (1894, vol. iv. pp. 519-534), and a notice by Henri Cordier, with a list of his writings, in The Royal Asiatic Society's Journal (Jan. 1895) ; see also Gaston Paris, "James Darmesteter," in Penseurs et poetes (1896, pp. I-61).