Luigi Pio Tessitori

Luigi Pio Tessitori (13 December 1887, in Udine – 22 November 1919, in Bikaner) was an Italian Indologist and linguist.

Biography

Tessitori was born in the north-eastern Italian town of Udine on 13 December 1887, to Guido Tessitori, a worker at the Foundling Hospital, and Luigia Rosa Venier Romano. He studied at the Liceo Classico Jacopo Stellini before going on to university. He studied at the University of Florence, obtaining his degree in the humanities in 1910. He is said to have been a quiet student, and when he took up the study of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit, his classmates gave him the nickname Indian Louis. which became an important reference for Italian Indologists. Tessitori's thesis was based on this work, and involved an analysis of the connections between it and Tulsidas's version, written in Avadhi nearly a thousand years later. He showed that Tulsidas had borrowed the main story from Valmiki, expanding or reducing the particulars, but retelling them in a poetic form that was independent of the original, and hence could be considered a new work. It was painstaking research involving a verse-by-verse comparison of the two versions, and showing that Tulsidas had followed different versions of the Ramayana that were extant in India at the time. was published under the supervision of Paolo Emilio Pavolini in 1911.

Linguistic Survey of India The Asiatic Society of Bengal invited Tessitori to join its Linguistic Survey of India. He was tasked by Sir George Grierson to lead the Bardic and Historical Survey of Rajputana. He arrived in 1914 and stayed in Rajputana for five years. He translated and commented upon the medieval chronicles and poems of Rajasthan, several of which he had earlier studied at Florence's national library.