RENOU, LOUIS

RENOU, LOUIS (1896–1966) was a French student of the religions of India and a Sanskrit grammarian. Louis Renou gave to the Indological world French translations of the Ṛgveda and other studies that have gained central importance in the scholarly understanding of Sanskrit texts as autonomous and internally consistent literatures. His Études védiques et paninéennes (1956–1969) and other publications on Sanskrit philology are exacting and precise studies that have elucidated for specialists the often obtuse and difficult, but fundamentally important, literatures of ancient India. His introductory works on the religions of South Asia have helped beginners gain confidence in their understanding of complicated religious systems.

Renou taught himself Sanskrit in his mid-twenties, and by the time he took a course in 1922 with Sylvain Lévi he found that he could read Sanskrit texts with ease. He was frustrated in his initial studies of the language, however, by the paucity of critical or analytical tools, and he became determined to provide such materials for others. He therefore focused his attention in his earlier works on Sanskrit philology, grammar, and literature. From these concerns he then moved into specialized studies and translations of the hymns of the Vedic Samhitās.

Generally taking issue with historical or cultural methods in the critical study of Indian religious systems, and particularly of Vedic canonical texts, Renou insisted throughout his career that the literatures and religious ideas of ancient India should not be understood either in comparison to the religions of other cultures or in their relationship to later developments in the religious systems of India itself. He was particularly assertive in his notion that the verses of the Ṛgveda are intentional poems in their own right and are not to be understood as Indian counterparts of Iranian religious literatures or as veiled records of or literary precursors to the Brahmanic ritual. For Renou, data relevant to a text's interpretation lay within the syntax and semantics of the text itself, not in the structures and dynamics of other religious expressions.

Because he maintained that the sacred texts of ancient India should be analyzed in their own terms, Renou's linguistic studies may be characterized as extended critical explications du text that eschew sociological, mythological, sacerdotal, developmental, or other contextual concerns. He therefore saw no recourse in commentaries, indigenous or otherwise (even those of the perhaps too widely accepted fourteenth-century Vedic commentator Sāyana), in his pursuit of the meaning of primary texts. His interpretive spirit was thus kindred to that of Panini, a Sanskrit linguist who in the eighth century bce wrote what many modern scholars hold to be the oldest grammar in the world and whose works Renou studied diligently.

Renou was born in Paris, but through his mother he had a long line of Alsatian ancestors. He was introduced to Indic studies while at the Lycée Janson of Sailly, where he read various articles by Auguste Barth, a family friend. He obtained the licence ès lettres in 1921, his studies having been interrupted by his captivity during World War I. During 1921–1922 he taught at the Lycée Corneille in Rouen and was awarded the docteur ès lettres in 1925, having written a principal thesis entitled "La valeur du parfait dans les hymns védique" (1925) and a secondary thesis entitled "La géographie de Prolémée: LʿInde (VII 1–4)" (1925), a critical edition and commentary.

Renou was professor of Sanskrit and comparative literature at Lyons from 1925 until 1928, when he moved to a similar positon at the École des Hautes Études in Paris. He was chosen in 1937 to head the department of Indian languages and literatures at the Sorbonne, where he succeeded Alfred Foucher as the director of the Institute de Civilisation Indienne. Renou was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (1946) and to the Académie du Japon (1956) as well as to academic and intellectual societies in India, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, and other countries. He also was the vice president of the Société Asiatique. Renou gave a series of lectures in India in 1948–1949 and subsequently became active in the Sanskrit Dictionary Project based in Pune (Poona). In 1951 he was invited to give a series of lectures at the University of Louvain and then at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Renou accepted Franklin Edgerton's invitation to teach at Yale University for the academic year 1952–1953, and from 1954 to 1956 Renou was the director of the Maison Franco-Japonaise in Tokyo, where he developed a course on the Atharvaveda.

Despite his concentration on Sanskrit grammar and exegesis, no aspect of Indian culture remained foreign to Renou, and through his writing he contributed much to Indological studies on an international scale.

Bibliography

From the long list of works written and edited by Renou, he is perhaps best known for the following.

La civilisation de l'Inde ancienne, d'après les textes sanskrits. Paris, 1950. Translated as The Civilization of Ancient India, 2d ed. (Calcutta, 1959).

Dictionnaire sanskrit-français. 3 vols. With N. Stchoupak and L. Nitti. Paris, 1931–1932.

Grammaire sanscrite. 2 vols. 2d ed. Paris, 1962.

L'hindouisme. 2d ed. Paris, 1958. Translated as The Nature of Hinduism (New York, 1963).

L'Inde classique. With Jean Filliozat et al. 2 vols. Paris, 1947–1953.

Les littératures de l'Inde. 2d ed. Paris, 1966. Translated as Indian Literature (New York, 1964).

La poésie religieuse de l'Inde antique. Paris, 1942.

Religions of Ancient India (1953). Reprint, New York, 1968.

New Sources

Balbir, Nalini, and Georges-Jean Pinault Langue, eds. Langue, style et structure dans le monde indien: centenaire de Louis Renou: actes du Colloque international (Paris, 25–27 janvier 1996). Paris, 1996.

Pinault, Georges-Jean. Bibliographie des travaux de Louis Renou, 1896–1966. Paris, 1997.

Renou, Louis. Louis Renou: choix d'études indiennes: réunies par Nalini Balbir et Georges-Jean Pinault; préface de Colette Caillat; index par Christine Chojnacki. Paris, 1997.

Marie-Simone Renou (1987)

Translated from French by William K. Mahony
Revised Bibliography