Rosane Rocher describes the not always happy and exemplary but fascinating life of Ludwig
Poley (1805-1885) which contrasts with biographies usually reserved for illustrious scholars.
The book explores the challenges that a nineteenth-century German Indologist could face
reveals his strategies for overcoming them and his character flaws that made him both rejected
by his peers and accepted in literary salons. As an illegitimate child Poley depended on
scholarships. He published in Berlin an edition and Latin translation of a Sanskrit text which
he did not submit at the University. Yet he later claimed it to have been his doctoral
dissertation. As Louis Poley he made a name for himself in Paris as a brilliant young
protagonist of the Oriental Renaissance and he published editions and French translations of
some Upanishads. He was a respected employee at the Prussian Embassy in London until he was
abruptly dismissed for his involvement in a scandal. Years of wandering through Europe without
academic employment followed. A transnational and multilingual scholar he contributed to the
introduction of English and German into the French secondary school curriculum. Only in the
last two decades of his life did he teach at a university. He was both a private lecturer in
Indian culture and antiquities and a teacher of French language and literature at the
University of Vienna and at other academic institutions. Poley's last publication on the
Vedantasara published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences was a final expression of his
lifelong commitment to the exploration of Vedanta.
