LOISELEUR-DESLONGCHAMPS, Auguste-Louis-Armand (L. des Longchamps). Paris 14.8.1805 — Paris 10.1.1840. French Indologist. Son of the noted physician and botanist Jean-Louis-Auguste L. des L. (1774–1849; from his name are formed the plant genera Loiseleuria and Deschampsia) and Catherine Françoise Mallet. After Collège Charlemagne studied botany and medicine, but interrupted soon and after a serious illness in 1824 started studies of Sanskrit and Arabic under Chézy and Silvestre de Sacy. Bachelier-ès-sciences 1825 Paris. From 1832 worked in the Manuscript Department of Bibliothèque royale. He was already sickly as a schoolboy and died early. Unmarried.

The magnum opus of Loiseleur-Drslongchamps was the critical edition of Manu. In his 1838 Essai he showed that the original collection of Indian fables was not the Hitopadeśa, as was then supposed, but the Pañcatantra.

Publications: “Prospectus” of his Manu edition, JA 2:2, 1828, 477f.

Yadjnadattabadha, ou la mort d’ Yadjnadatta, épisode du Ramayana, publié en sanscrit d’après le texte donné par M. Chézy, avec un épisode du Raghuvansa sur le même sujet, et un choix de sentences de Bhartrihari. 32 p. P. 1829.

Edited: Mānavaṁ Dharmaśāstraṁ. Lois de Manou. 16+576+8 p. P. 1830; translated the same. 8+482 p. P. 1833.

Annotated edition of Galland’s Mille et une Nuits, and Petis de La Croix’s Mille et un Jours. 1838; introduction also separately as: Essai historique sur les contes orientaux. 109 p. P. 1838.

Essai sur les fables indiennes et leur introduction en Europe; suivi du Roman des sept sages de Rome en prose etc. 186+45+296 p. P. 1838.

Edited & transl.: Amarakocha ou vocabulaire d’Amarasinha. Publié en Sanskrit avec une trad. fr., des notes et un index. 1-2. 13+380 & 16+360 p. P. 1839-45 (posthumously edited by Dubeux & Langlois).

Contributions in Encyclopédie nouvelle of P. Leroux and J. Reynaud.

Sources: A_t, Biogr. univ. Suppl. 72, 1843, 65-67; L. Dubeux, preface to Amarakocha 2, i-xiii; L. R., Nouv. Biogr. Gén. 31, 1860, 496; Reinaud, JA 3:10, 1840, 78f.; Windisch 74 & 141f.; French Wikipédia with portrait.