Brief History Of Buddhist Studies In Europe And Maerica

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

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BUDDHIST STUDIES IN THE WEST
lated many stories from the Tibetan version of the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya and published the Tibetan text and a German translation of Tāranātha's History of Buddhism in India.57 Also based on Tibetan sources is V. P. Vasilev's Buddhism which was published in Russian in 1857 and in Germ translations in 1860 and 1865.58
Of great importance for the study of Indian Buddhism is the work done by Sinologists. Abel-Rémusat (1788–1832) who in 1815 became the first professor of Chinese at the Collège de France translated Fa-hsien's Fo-kuo-chi. It was published after his death by Klaproth and Landresse.59 His successor, Stanislas Julien (1797-1873) translated the life of Hsuan-tsang and his Hsi-yü
cbi.60
We mentioned the study of Buddhism among the Kalmyks by Bergmann and Schmidt. Buddhism in the Theravāda countries also became better known by the work of the Wesleyan missionary R. Spence Hardy (1803-1868) who published several works based on Sinhalese sources. 61 In Burma the Roman Catholic bishop P. Bigandet (1813–1894) studied Burmese sources on the life of the Buddha62 and in Siam Henry Alabaster (died 1884) translated several Siamese texts.63
In the period 1800 to 1877 the knowledge of Buddhism in the West greatly increased. Still very few Pāli texts were published during this period, but the publication of a grammar and a dictionary and the presence of collections of
57 Tibetan Tales, London, 1882: Târanathae de Doctrinae Buddhicae in India propagatione narratio, Petropoli, 1868; Târanatha's Geschichte des Buddhismus in Indien, St. Petersburg, 1869.
58 Buddizm, ego dogmaty, istorija i literatura, č. 1., Spb., 1857; Der Buddhismus, Seine Dogmen, Geschichte und Literatur, St.-Pétersbourg-Riga-Leipzig, 1860; Le Bouddhisme, ses dogmes, son histoire et sa littérature, Paris, 1865. On Vasil'ev see Z. I. Gorbačeva, N. A. Petrov, G. F. Smykalov, B. I. Pankratov, Russkij Kitaeved Akademik Vasilij Pavlovič Vasilev (1818-1900), Očerki po istorii russkogo postokovedenija, II, Moskva, 1956, pp. 232–340.
59 Foe Koue Ki ou Relation des royaumes bouddhiques de Fa bian, Paris, 1836.
60 Histoire de la vie de Hiouen-thsang et de ses voyages dans l'Inde, Paris, 1853; Mémoires sur les Contrées occidentales de Hiouen-thsang, Paris, 1857-1858.
61 Eastern Monachism, London, 1850; Manual of Buddhism in its Modern Development, London, 1853; The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists, London, 1866.
62 The Life of Gaudama, Rangoon, 1858; Second enlarged edition, The Life or Legend of Gaudama, Rangoon, 1866; third edition, London, 1880; fourth edition, London, 1911.
63 The Wheel of the Law. Buddhism illustrated from Siamese sources, London, 1871.
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