Fyodor Shcherbatskoy

Fyodor Ippolitowitsch Schtscherbatskoi (Russian Фёдор Ипполитович Щербатской; born September 19, 1866 in Kielce, Congress Poland, † March 18, 1942 in Burabai, Kazakh SSR ) was a Russian Indologist with a focus on Buddhism. He is considered the founder of scientific reflections on Buddhist philosophy in the Western world.

Life

Schtscherbatskoi studied at the Tsarskoe Selo Lyceum and later at the State University of St. Petersburg, at the Minayev Ivan and Sergei Oldenburg were his teachers. Then he went abroad and studied in Vienna with Georg Buehler Indian poetry and in Bonn together with Hermann Jacobi Buddhist philosophy. In 1897 he founded with Oldenburg, the Bibliotheca Buddhica, a collection of rare Buddhist texts. 1903 published Schtscherbatskoi after a trip through India and Mongolia his book epistemology and logic according to the teaching of the later Buddhists in Russian. He initiated in 1928 the Institute of Buddhist Culture in Leningrad. His work Buddhist logic had enormous influence on the Buddhist Studies.

His knowledge of Sanskrit and in Tibetan languages ​​earned him the respect of Rabindranath Thakur and Jawaharlal Nehru. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya said about Schtscherbatskoi, he had the Indians helped to discover their own past and to develop the right perspective on the philosophical heritage. The Encyclopædia Britannica describes it as " foremost Western authority on Buddhist philosophy."

Work (selection)

• Epistemology and logic according to the teaching of the later Buddhists, Munich Neubiberg: O. Castle, 1924
• Buddhist logic, Osnabrück. Biblio - Verl, Neudr
• The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word Dharma
• Madhyanta - Vibhanga. Discourse on Discrimination Between Middle and Extreme, translation of Schtscherbatskoi
• Abhisamayalankara - Prajnaparamita - Upadesa - Sastra