BURNOUF, EUGÈNE (1801–1852), French Sanskritist, Buddhologist, and Indologist. Son of the classicist Jean-Louis Burnouf, Eugène Burnouf was born in Paris on April 8, 1801. After distinguishing himself at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the École de Chartes, Eugène began the study of Sanskrit with his father and Leonard de Chézy in 1824, only one year after de Chézy's appointment to Europe's first Sanskrit chair. Just two years later, Burnouf, together with Christian Lassen, published Essai sur le Pali (1826), which identified and analyzed the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and mainland Southeast Asia.

If a single person can be credited with inaugurating the West's serious study of Buddhism according to primary sources, he is Eugène Burnouf. In less than three decades prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, Burnouf succeeded in establishing...