Henry, Victor
HENRY, VICTOR (1850- ); French philologist, was born at Colmar in Alsace. Having held appointments at Douai and Lille, he was appointed professor of Sanskrit and comparative grammar in the university of Paris. A prolific and versatile writer, he is probably best known by the English translations of his Precis de Grammaire comparee de I' anglais et de I'allemand and Precis . . . du Grec et du Latin. Important works by him on India and Indian languages are: Manuel pour etudier le Sanscrit vedique (with A. Bergaigne, 1890); Elements de Sanscrit classique (1902); Precis de grammaire Pdlie (1904); Les Litteratures dt I'Inde: Sanscrit, Pali, Prdcril (1904); La Magie dans I'Inde antique (1904); Le Parsisme (1903); L'Agni^toma (1906).
Obscure languages (such as Innok, Quichua, Greenland) and local dialects (Lexique itymologique du Breton moderne; Le Dicuecle Alaman de Colmar) also claimed his attention. Le Langage Martien is a curious book. It contains a discussion of some 40 phrases (amounting to about 300 words), which a certain Mademoiselle Helene Smith (a well-known spiritualist medium of Geneva), while on a hypnotic visit to the planet Mars, learnt and repeated and even wrote down during her trance as specimens of a language spoken there, explained to her by a disembodied interpreter.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
