Richard Gombrich

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

life and work

Gombrich was the only child of the concert pianist Ilse Gombrich and the art historian Sir Ernst Gombrich . After studying classical philology and Sanskrit and Pali , he became a soil professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University in 1976. His main field of work is Buddhology , in which he made a name for himself in 1971 through a groundbreaking anthropological study of Sinhala Buddhism : Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon . In this study, Gombrich deals with the change in religious beliefs and their practice over the course of two and a half millennia. He argues that contemporary Sinhalese practices, which include magic and the worship of Hindu deities, are not a later falsification of Theravada Buddhism, but rather go back to developments in the early days of Buddhism.

Gombrich, who is close to the philosopher Karl Popper , became a world-renowned scholar, especially of Theravada Buddhism, through a large number of books and articles and received honors from the President of Sri Lanka and the Asiatic Society of Calcutta for his research .

In 1990 he was elected a member of the Academia Europaea .

Literature (selection)

as an author

• Theravada Buddhism. From ancient India to modern Sri Lanka ("Theravada Buddhism"). New edition Kohlhammer, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-17-014007-8 .

as editor

• Buddhism. Past and present ("The world of Buddhism"). 3rd edition CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57346-0 (together with Heinz Bechert ; former title: Die Welt des Buddhismus ).

Web links

• Biography with photo

Individual evidence

1. ^ Membership directory: Richard Gombrich. Academia Europaea, accessed November 8, 2017 .