Du corps humain, au carrefour de plusieurs savoirs en Inde / The Human Body, at the Crossroads of Multiple Indian Ways of Knowing. Stvdia Asiatica, vols. IV-V.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo
• Position: Book review

Du corps humain, au carrefour de plusieurs savoirs en Inde / The Human Body, at the Crossroads of Multiple Indian Ways of Knowing. Stvdia Asiatica, vols. IV-V. Edited by EUGEN CIURTIN. Bucharest: UNIVERSITE DE BUCAREST / Paris: DE BOCCARD, 2004. Pp. 832, illus.

The combined fourth and fifth volumes (2003-2004) of Stvdia Asiatica, published by the Center for the History of Religions of the University of Bucharest, are devoted to "Papers Presented to Arion Rosu by his Colleagues and Friends on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday" (English subtitle). As the editor notes, the volume, included in Stvdia Asiatica and published in Paris by De Boccard, who also published Rosu's works, "est plus precisement un travail franco-roumain, tout autant que la biographie de celui qu'il honore" (p. 47). The Franco-Romanian connection appears most clearly in tributes by Collette Caillat: "En guise d'introduction" (pp. 9-14), and by Eugen Ciurtin: "Liminaire" (pp. 17-21), and "Titres et travaux d'Arion Rosu" (pp. 23-39; besides five articles, the octogenarian's "Travaux en preparation" include the edition and French translation of the Rasendracudamani, a text on which Rosu has been working for about twenty years).

Arion Rosu was born at Sinaia in the Carpathians on February 1, 1924. In 1931 the family moved to Bucharest, where young Arion had to face chaotic years of racial and ideological discrimination. Yet, with the help of private institutions and the friendship of men like Anton Zigmund-Cerbu and Sergiu Al-George, he eagerly studied linguistics, classics, and Sanskrit, and in 1956 he wrote his first article, "Les noms de la pupille en Sanskrit," published in the Mitteilungen des Instituts fur Orientforschung. In 1965, while other members of the family emigrated to Israel, Arion decided to pursue a scholarly career in Europe. After being briefly employed as a librarian at the Catholic university of Milan, he finally arrived in Paris where, as a protege of Jeannine Auboyer, he spent his first two years at the Musee Guimet. In 1967 he joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique as Attache de recherches, was promoted to...