Otto Ottonovich Rosenberg and His Contribution to Buddhology in Russia.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo
• Position: Brief Reviews of Books

Otto Ottonovich Rosenberg and His Contribution to Buddhology in Russia. Edited by KARENINA KOLLMAR-PAULENZ AND JOHN S. BARLOW. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, no. 41. Vienna: ARBEITSKREIS FUR TIBETISCHE UND BUDDHISTISCHE STUDIEN UNIVERSITAT WIEN, 1998. Pp. xiii + 81.

"This book aims at providing a 'bridge of understanding' between English-speaking scholars and their Russian colleagues who mostly publish the results of their research in Russian" (p. ix). It plans to do so by highlighting the life and times of Otto O. Rosenberg (1888-1919), a scholar "whose work about Buddhist philosophy can still be considered a milestone in Western Buddhology" (p. ix), and by drawing attention to the research centers for Buddhology that have recently been established in Russia.

The English translation of Tatyana V. Yermakova's unpublished paper, "Otto O. Rozenberg in the Context of the Development of Russian Buddhology," offers an interesting survey of Buddhist studies in Russia, from the beginnings with O. M. Kovlevskij, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, and their efforts to prove "the pre-eminence of the Christian creed in comparison to Buddhism" (p.2), A. M. Pozdneev, G. Ts. Tsybikov, B. B. Baradija, V. P. Vasil'ev, I. P. Minaev, S. F. Ol'denburg, F. I. Shcherbatskoj, down to O. O. Rosenberg. After referring to the "open" but short-lived Institute of Buddhist Culture (founded in 1928, but "subjected to illegal reprisals" in the period of the "Great [Stalinist] Terror" [p. 10]). the article ends on an optimistic note with the recent revival of Buddhist studies in Russia, both in the traditional Buddhist regions of the Russian Federation (Buryatia, Kalmykia, Tuva), and in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg (V. I. Rudoj, E. P. Ostrovskaya, E. A. Ostrovskaya [Jr], T. V. Yermakova, M. E...