Sylvain Lévi (March 28, 1863 – October 30, 1935) was an influential French orientalist and indologist who taught Sanskrit and Indian religion at the École pratique des hautes études.
Lévi's book Théâtre Indien is an important work on the subject of Indian performance art, and Lévi also conducted some of the earliest analysis of Tokharian fragments discovered in Western China. Lévi exerted a significant influence on the life and thought of Marcel Mauss, the nephew of Émile Durkheim.
Sylvain Lévi was a co-founder of the École française d'Extrême-Orient in Hanoi.
According to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Lévi was the (one of the) founder(s) of the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) (French School of the Far East) in Hanoi. The École française d'Extrême-Orient's website notes that the school was founded in Hanoi in 1902. One of his students, Suzanne Karpelès, the first female member of EFEO, joined him there in 1922 and remained in French Indochina until 1941.
He was also an early opponent of the traditionalist author René Guénon, citing the latter's uncritical belief in a "Perennial philosophy", that a primal truth revealed directly to primitive humanity, based on an extreme reductionist view of Hinduism, which was the subject of Guénon's first book, L'Introduction générale a l'étude des doctrines hindoues. That was a thesis delivered to Lévi at the Sorbonne and rejected.
Le Théâtre Indien, Deuxième tirage, 1963, Publié à l'occasion du centenaire de la naissance de Sylvain Lévi, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, IVe section, 83e Fascicule, Paris, Distributeur exclusif: Librairie Honoré Champion.
Lévi, S. 1898. La doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brâhmanas, Paris : Ernest Leroux, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études-Sciences religieuses [= BÉHÉ-SR], vol. 11.
Lévi, S. 1966. Id., avec une préface de L. Renou, 2e éd., Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, BÉHÉ-SR, vol. 73.
Lévi, S. 2003. Id., réimpr. de Lévi 1966, avec une postface inédite de Ch. Malamoud, Brepols : Turnhout, BÉHÉ-SR, vol. 118.