DARMESTETER, diirm'ste-tar'.JAMEs(18-19 94). A French Orientalist. whose eminence was achieved especially in the field of Iranian schola• i=hip. He was born, of .fe•ish parentage, at Chateau-Salins, in Lorraine. He was educated at the Bonaparte. Paris, from which he graduated with the highest honors in 1567, when he began to devote himself to Oriental philology, chiefly raider the guidance of the gift cd Aliehel Br•]. Lt 1877 lie was appointed assistant professor of %mid at the Eel& des Hautes Etudes, and in 1885 was advanced to the professorship of Iranian languages and litera ture at the College do France. In 1886 lie visit ed India, to make special philological researches in connection with the sacred books of the Par sis, and was afterwards honored by au appoint ment as fellow of lionihay University. For years lie had acted as secretary of the Sociai; Asiatique de Paris, and he was likewiie busily engaged as an editor of a leading political and literary periodical, La Revue do Paris, at the time of his death. Ills writings in the field if Avestan
philology and Zoroastrianism are of prime im portance, even if his theories, which are often very radical, cannot, always be accepted. Among Ids works may lie mentioned: Haurratat ct :taffeta!, Essai sac hi mythologic do PAresta (1875) ; Ormazd et Ahriman, !cu•s origines of (cu• histoirc (1877); Etudes iranicnnes (1883) ; The Zend-Avesta (translated 1880, 1883) ; Essais orientaux (1883) ; Chants populaires des Af ghans (1888-90) ; Los d'Israi'l (1892) ; and his most important work,• Lc Zend-A Costa ; TradlICi !On nourcIlc (3 vole., 1892-93). A num ber of his literary essays have been translated into English by Ilelen Jastrow ( Boston, 1895), and by his wife (New York, 1897).