Brief History Of Buddhist Studies In Europe And Maerica

SR No.: 269304
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong
Total Pages: 86
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 7 MB

Page 12

THE EASTERN BUDDHIST
arrived in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, and the following year, on the 18th March, they finally arrived in Lhasa. Manuel Freyre returned to India, but Desideri remained in Lhasa until the 28th March 1721. During the five years of his stay in Lhasa, Desideri studied in Tibetan monasteries and acquired an excellent knowledge of the Tibetan language and the Tibetan religion. He made excerpts of many Tibetan works, first of all of the Lam-rim chen-mo. He left India in 1729 and during his return journey he began writing a Relazione on his travels and on Tibetan customs and religion. The manuscript of his work remained unpublished until 1904 when extracts of it were published by C. Puini who had discovered the manuscript in 1875. An incomplete English version was published in 1931 by Filippo De Filippi: An Account of Tibet; the travels of Ippolito Desideri of Pistoia, S.J. 1712–1727, London, 1931; second ed., 1937. A complete and beautifully annotated edition of the original Italian version has been published recently by Luciano Petech.26 In this edition, the Relazione consists of four books. The third book (Petech, vol. VI, pp. 115–309) is entirely devoted to a description of Tibetan religion. Petech characterizes it with the follow words: "A stupendous description of the lamaist religion, penetratingly a profoundly understood in its essential nature as few European scholars have been able to do in the two following centuries.” And Giuseppe Tucci remarked: "The work of Desideri was in advance of his time: the secrets of the speculations of Mahāyāna Buddhism which began to be revealed by Orientalist erudition in the last years of the last century are already clear in the logical scholastic architecture of his Relazione" (cf. Petech, op. cit., V, pp. xxvixxvii). An English version of the complete Italian text of the Relazione and of the precious notes by Luciano Petech is an urgent desideratum.
It is only in the nineteenth century that the Indian sources of Buddhism in Pāli and Sanskrit began to be studied. The first Pāli grammar to be published in Europe was written by Burnouf (1801-1852) and Lassen (1800-1876): E. Burnouf et Chr. Lassen: Essai sur le Pali ou langue sacrée de la presqu'île au-delà du Gange, Paris, 1826 (vii+224pp., 6pl.). In the first chapter Burnouf sketches the history of Pāli studies up to 1826. According to Burnouf the first to mention Pāli was Simon de La Loubère who visited Siam in 1687–1688 as envoy of King
26
I missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal, V-VII, Roma, 1954-1956.