Alexander von Staël-Holstein

Alexander von Staël -Holstein (born 1 January 1877 in Testama, Governorate of Livonia, † March 16, 1937 in Beijing, China) was an Estonian orientalist, Indologist, sinologist and East Asia scholars.

Life

Staël -Holstein came from a German -Swedish- Baltic nobility Westphalian origin ( Staël von Holstein) and was related to the husband of French writer Madame de Staël. He grew up in his native Baltic with the German and the French language, on the family, is still standing today in Good Testama, which he inherited in 1900.

After attending high school in Pärnu and philology studies in Dorpat, he went to Germany to study Oriental. After three years of study at the University of Berlin ( in time is at the Prussian authorities to participate in a duel on record ), he completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Halle in Richard Pischel, which he completed in 1900. Pischel was then the world's leading expert in Prakrit, the archetype of the Indian Sanskrit. The dissertation topic was the translation of the second part of the Karmapradipa, a Vedic Sutra. The first part was in 1889 also translated in Pischel part of a dissertation by Friedrich Schrader.

After the graduation Staël -Holstein traveled through Europe and India and studied with various prominent Orientalists and Indologists. In 1909 he received a professorship at the University of Saint Petersburg for an assistant professorship, which served the research of the Central and East Asian regions of Russia. At the same time he was a member of the Academic Committee for the Study of Central Asia and the Far East ( ACECAFE ). 1912 was followed by studies at Harvard University for the study of Sanskrit.

At the outbreak of the October Revolution of 1917, Staël -Holstein held at Beijing (China). Although dispossessed him the new Estonian government in the wake of the Estonian land reform in 1919 in part, he participated in the Estonian citizenship. He spent the rest of his life in Beijing.

In 1922, Staël -Holstein an appointment at the Peking University for a chair of Sanskrit, Tibetan and Indian religious history. In 1927 he was a founding member of the Sino - Indian Institute in Beijing, 1928 followed by a further study in Harvard.

Services

Staël -Holstein wrote important papers on the Indian and Tibetan religion, besides, he dealt intensively with the phonetics of Sanskrit and Chinese.

Works

• The Kāçyapaparivarta: a Mahāyānasūtra of the Ratnakūṭa class, edited in the original Sanskrit, in Tibetan and in Chinese, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1926
• On a Tibetan text translated into Sanskrit under Ch'ien Lung (XIII cent. ) And into Chinese under Tao Kuang (XIX cent. ), Bulletin of the National Library of Peiping, 1932
• On two Tibetan pictures Representing some of the spiritual ancestors of the Dalai Lama and of the Panchen Lama, the Bulletin of the National Library of Peiping, 1932
• A commentary to the Kāçcyapaparivarta, edited in Tibetan and in Chinese, Beijing: Jointly published by the National Library and the National Tsinghau University, 1933
• On a Peking edition of the Tibetan Kanjur Which Seems to be unknown in the West, Beijing: Lazarist Press, 1934
• On two recent reconstructions of a Sanskrit hymn transliterated with Chinese characters in the X century AD, Beijing: Lazarist Press, 1934
• Two Lamaistic pantheons, edited with introduction and indexes by Walter Eugene Clark from materials collected by the late Baron A. von Staël -Holstein, Harvard - Yenching Institute monograph series 3 and 4, Cambridge, Mass.:. Harvard University Press, 1937

Literature / source

• Serge Elisseeff: Stael -Holstein 's Contribution to Asiatic Studies. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol 3, no. 1 (Apr., 1938), pp. 1-8 ( available through JSTOR )

• Sinologist
• Indologist
• Estonian
• German - Balt
• Born in 1877
• Died in 1937
• Man