Paul Demiéville
| Paul Demiéville | |||||||||
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| Born |
13 September 1894 Lausanne, Switzerland |
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| Died | 23 March 1979 (aged 84) Paris, France |
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| Citizenship | French (naturalized in 1931) | ||||||||
| Nationality | Swiss | ||||||||
| Fields | Buddhism, Chinese poetry | ||||||||
| Institutions | Collège de France | ||||||||
| Academic advisors | Édouard Chavannes, Sylvain Lévi | ||||||||
| Spouse | Helène Demiéville | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Chinese | 戴密微 | ||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Dài Mìwēi |
| Wade–Giles | Tai4 Mi4-wei1 |
Paul Demiéville (13 September 1894 – 23 March 1979) was a Swiss-French sinologist and Orientalist known for his studies of the Dunhuang manuscripts and Buddhism and his translations of Chinese poetry, as well as for his 30-year tenure as co-editor of T'oung Pao.
Demiéville was one of the foremost sinologists of the first half of the 20th century, and was known for his wide-ranging contributions to Chinese and Buddhist scholarship. His influence on Chinese scholarship in France was particularly profound, as he was the only major French sinologist to survive World War II.
Demiéville was one of the first sinologists to learn Japanese to augment their study of China: prior to the early 20th century, most scholars of China learned Manchu as their second scholarly language, but Demiéville's study of Japanese instead was soon followed by nearly every major sinologist since his day.
Paul Demiéville was born on 13 September 1894 in Lausanne, Switzerland, a son of a prominent physician in Lausanne. Combined with the family's Swiss citizenship, his father's status and income allowed Demiéville to receive an international and multicultural upbringing far beyond most of his contemporaries. A native speaker of French, he learned Italian as a boy during his family's summer holidays in Italy, then perfected his German as a student in Bern, where he earned his baccalaureate (secondary school diploma) in 1911.
Following his completion of secondary school, Demiéville spent time studying in Munich, London, and Edinburgh, where he was able to attend lectures by George Saintsbury at the University of Edinburgh. He then attended the University of Paris, where he wrote an essay on the musical suite of the 17th and 18th centuries and was awarded a licentiate degree in 1914. Demiéville then spent the year 1915 studying at King's College London where he was introduced to Chinese, which quickly became his focus. After returning to France, Demiéville studied at the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes (School of Living Oriental Languages), after which he moved to the Collège de France, where he further studied Chinese under the tutelage of Édouard Chavannes and began learning Sanskrit from Sylvain Lévi. He earned his Diplômé from the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes in 1919.
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