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...