Richard Gombrich

Richard Francis Gombrich ( born July 17, 1937 in London ) is an English Indologist and Buddhologist. He was from 1976 to 2004 Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University from 1994 to 2002, President of the Pali Text Society. He currently leads two centers of Buddhist and Hindu studies at Oxford.

Life and work

Gombrich was the only child of concert pianist Ilse Gombrich and the art historian Sir Ernst Gombrich. After studying classical philology and Sanskrit and Pali, he was Professor of Sanskrit in 1976 ground at Oxford University. His main field of work is the Buddhology, in 1971 he made ​​his name through a groundbreaking anthropological study of Sinhalese Buddhism: Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon (Doctrine and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the rural highlands of Ceylon). In this study, Gombrich busy with the change of religious beliefs and their practice in the course of two and a half millennia. He argues that the contemporary Sinhala practices which include magic and the worship of Hindu deities, not a future modification of Theravada Buddhism are, but rather go back to developments in the early period of Buddhism.

Gombrich, who is close to the philosopher Karl Popper, has been through a variety of books and articles into a globally recognized scholar in particular of Theravada Buddhism and has received awards for his research by the President of Sri Lanka and of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta.

Literature (selection )

• Theravada Buddhism. From ancient India to modern Sri Lanka ( " Theravada buddhism "). Neuaufl. Carbon hammer, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-17-014007-8.

• Buddhism. Past and present ( "The world of Buddhism "). 3rd ed C. H. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57346-0 (together with Heinz Bechert; former Title: The world of Buddhism).