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Elizabeth Napper received her PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Virginia in 1985. The editor of such books as ''Kindness, Clarity, and Insight'' by the Dalai Lama and ''Mind in Tibetan Buddhism'', she is currently codirector of the Tibetan Nuns Project in Dharamsala, India. ([https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/elizabeth-napper/ Source Accessed Dec 19, 2024]) +
David Ellerton grew up in Denver, Colorado, and took his first Shambhala Training level in 1995 after reading several of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s books. A few years later he met Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche in Boulder and in 1999 participated in Seminary and Warriors Assembly. The following year he attended Kalapa Assembly. After a year on staff at Shambhala Mountain Center, he travelled with the Sakyong as a Continuity Kusung and Secretary (2001-2002). In 2004 he moved to Japan, where he taught English and continued his study of Japanese and Aikido, which he began practicing as an undergraduate student in Boulder.
Upon returning to the United States he enrolled in [[Naropa University]]’s M.A. program in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (Shedra Track), and began his study of Tibetan. During this time he received the Vajrayogini Abhisheka from the Sakyong. After graduating, he spent much of 2008 in both India and Nepal studying Tibetan and receiving commentary on the Uttaratantra Shastra at Pullahari Monastery. In 2008 he began a Ph.D. program in Religious Studies at [[University of California, Santa Barbara]]. He is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at UCSB and is conducting his dissertation research on Tibetan prophecy (lung bstan) at the [[Central University of Tibetan Studies]] in India.
([http://nalandatranslation.org/who-we-are/members/david-ellerton/ Source Accessed May 26, 2015]) +
'''Obituary: Elliot Sperling (1951-2017)''' by Tenzin Dorjee. (''HIMALAYA''. Volume 37, Number 1, pp 149-150)
Professor Elliot Sperling’s death was a colossal tragedy by
every measure. He was only 66 years old, and he exuded
life, health, and purpose—the antithesis of death. After
retiring from a long professorship at Indiana University
in 2015, where he was director of the Tibetan Studies
program at the department of Central Eurasian Studies,
Sperling moved back to his native New York. He bought an
apartment in Jackson Heights, where he converted every
wall into meticulously arranged bookshelves—only the
windows were spared. He was clearly looking forward to
a busy retirement, living in what was basically a library
pretending to be an apartment.
Sperling was the world’s foremost authority on historical
Sino-Tibetan relations. For his landmark work “on the political, religious, cultural, and economic relations between
Tibet and China from the fourteenth through seventeenth
centuries,” he was awarded a MacArthur genius grant at
the age of 33.1
He accumulated a compact but enduring body of work that defined and shaped Tibetan studies
over the last three decades. No less important, he was also
a phenomenal teacher, storyteller, entertainer, whiskey connoisseur (he delighted in teaching us how to enjoy
the peaty Scotch whiskies), and a passionate advocate for
Tibetan and Uyghur causes.
Through his seminal writings on Tibet’s relations with
China during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, he
became arguably the first historian to use both Chinese
language archives and Tibetan language sources extensively, bringing to light the separation and independence that
characterized the relationship between the two nations.
Until he came along, most Western academics viewed
Tibet through Chinese eyes, largely because they could
not access Tibetan sources. Sperling, fluent in Tibetan as
well as Chinese, upended the old Sino-centric narrative
and transformed the field. Roberto Vitali, who organized a
festschrift for Sperling in 2014, writes that Sperling’s work
“will stay as milestones” in Tibetan studies.2 His writings
have become so central to the field that any scholar who
writes a paper about historical Sino-Tibetan relations cannot do so without paying homage to Sperling’s work. He is,
so to speak, the Hegel of Sino-Tibetan history.
One can imagine the joy many of us felt when Professor
Sperling chose to make his home in Jackson Heights, the
second (if unofficial) capital of the exile Tibetan world—
after Dharamsala, India. We saw him at demonstrations at
the Chinese consulate, art openings at Tibet House, poetry
nights at Little Tibet restaurant, and sometimes at dinner
parties in the neighborhood. At every gathering, he held
court as the intellectual life of the party. His friends and
students bombarded him with questions on topics ranging
from art to politics to linguistics, for his erudition was
not limited to history alone. Unfailingly generous and
eloquent, he supplied the most intriguing, insightful and
exhaustive answers to every question. Each conversation
with him was a scholarly seminar. Among the circle of
Tibetan activists and artists living in New York City,
Sperling quickly fell into a sort of second professorship, an
underground tenure without the trappings of university.
We weren’t about to let him retire so easily.
Some of Professor Sperling’s most influential early works
include: The 5th Karma-pa and Some Aspects of the Relationship
Between Tibet and the Early Ming (1980); The 1413 Ming
Embassy to Tsong-ka-pa and the Arrival of Byams-chen chos-rje
Shakya ye-shes at the Ming Court (1982); Did the Early Ming
Emperors Attempt to Implement a ‘Divide and Rule’ Policy in
Tibet? (1983); and The Ho Clan of Ho-chou: A Tibetan Family in
Service to the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (1990) among others.
One of my personal favorites in his corpus is The 5th Karmapa and Some Aspects of the Relationship Between Tibet and the
Early Ming. In this text, Sperling argues that in the early
years following the collapse of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in
1367, the Ming rulers of China adopted a non-expansionist
foreign policy, displaying greater interest in drawing clear
boundaries to keep the ‘barbarians’ out of China than
in expanding its boundaries to encroach into non-Ming
territories. Ming China was initially conceived more as
an inward-looking state than an outward-looking empire,
partly in critique of the ruthless expansionism of their
predecessors, the Mongol Yuan rulers. In fact, Sperling
quotes from the very proclamation carried by the first
mission that Ming Taitsu, or the Hongwu Emperor, sent to
Tibet:
:Formerly, the hu people [i.e. the Mongols] usurped
:authority in China. For over a hundred years caps
:and sandals were in reversed positions. Of all
:hearts, which did not give rise to anger? In recent
:years, the hu rulers lost hold of the government….
:Your Tibetan state is located in the western lands.
:China is now united, but I am afraid that you have
:still not heard about this. Therefore this proclamation [is sent].3
Sperling goes on to write that this “first mission is acknowledged by Chinese records to have met with no
success,” and that necessitated the dispatching of a second
mission.4
In ''Did the Early Ming Emperors Attempt to Implement a “Divide and Rule” Policy in Tibet?''5
Sperling defies decades of conventional wisdom with a bold argument when he writes:
:The Chinese court was never, in fact, able to mount
:a military expedition beyond the Sino-Tibetan
:frontier regions. This fact becomes strikingly
:obvious as one glances through both Tibetan and
:Chinese sources for the period in question…. Unable
:to protect its embassies or even to retaliate against
:attacks on them, China was hardly in a position to
:manifest the kind of power needed to implement a
:policy of “divide and rule” in Tibet.
For many Tibetans who care about seemingly inconsequential details of the murky Sino-Tibetan relations from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, a historical period that has become a domain of highly charged information battles between Dharamsala and Beijing, Sperling’s writings are like a constellation of bright lamps illuminating the tangled web of Sino-Tibetan history. He excavated critical pieces of Tibet’s deep past from the forbidding archives of antiquity, arranged them in a coherent narrative, and virtually placed in our hands several centuries of our own history.
Elliot Sperling’s academic stature would have allowed
him to be an ivory tower intellectual. Instead, he chose
to be a true ally of the Tibetan people and an unwavering
champion of Tibetan freedom. While he studied with
Taktser Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, he
maintained lifelong friendships with the people he met
in Dharamsala: Tashi Tsering (the preeminent Tibetan
historian), Jamyang Norbu (the rebel intellectual and
award-winning author), Peter Brown (the ‘American
Khampa’ and a brother in the Tibetan struggle). Sperling
joined many of us in the trenches of activism, always
encouraging us to embark on bigger and bolder advocacy
campaigns for Tibet. Speaking in his Bronx-accented
Tibetan, he told us that if only Tibetans studied our history
more seriously, we would be able to believe that Tibet will
be free again.
A sharp and fearless critic of Beijing, Sperling neither
minced his words nor censored his writings under fear of
being banned from China. Even when he taught in Beijing
for a semester, where he developed a close friendship with
the Tibetan poet Woeser, he successfully avoided the trap
of self-censorship that has neutered so many scholars in
our time.6
While railing against Beijing’s atrocities in Tibet, he managed to be critical of Dharamsala’s excessively conciliatory stance toward Beijing.7
His provocative critiques of the Tibetan leadership sometimes made us uncomfortable, but that was exactly the impact he was seeking as a teacher who cared deeply about Tibet: to awaken and educate us by pushing us into our discomfort zone. “Having a teacher like Sperling was a bit like having access to a genius, a father, and some sort of bodhi all in one,” says Sara Conrad, a doctoral student at Indiana University who studied with Sperling for many years. “A walking encyclopedia, I felt I could learn a lot just being near him—and he took every opportunity to teach me. I benefited learning from him about Tibet and Tibetan of course, but also about parenthood and morality, music and comedy. In terms of academia he told me I must be able to live with myself after I write, and therefore it is always best to be honest.”
In recent years, Sperling took up the case of Ilham Tohti,
the Uyghur intellectual sentenced to life imprisonment
by Beijing. He played a key role in raising Tohti’s profile
as a prisoner of conscience, nominating him for human
rights awards. He took Tohti’s daughter, Jewher, under
his wing and oversaw her wellbeing and education. In
Jewher’s own words, Elliot Sperling became “like a second
father” to her. His friendship with Ilahm Tohti and Jewher
exemplified the compassion and generosity with which he
treated everyone. Sure, he made his mark in this world as a
scholar, but his monumental intellect was matched by his
unbounded kindness, altruism, and humanity.
“Professor Sperling was the moral compass of Tibetan studies,” said fellow historian Carole McGranahan at Sperling’s March 11 memorial in New York. His untimely death
has left an abyss in our hearts and a chasm in the world of Tibetology. Christophe Besuchet, a fellow activist, remarked that it is “as if a whole library had burned down.”
Even so, it is worth remembering that Sperling has already done far more than his fair share of good in the world, and he deserves a rest (or a break, if you consider it from a Buddhist perspective). In the course of 66 years, he lived multiple lifetimes—as a taxi driver, hippie, scholar, mentor, activist, father—each one more productive and meaningful than the last. He has engraved his spirit so deeply in the lives of so many of us that, in a way, he is still alive. And while one library has burned down, there are thousands of libraries where his words still live and breathe.
''Endnotes''<br>
1. MacArthur Foundation, <https://www.macfound.org/
fellows/236/> (accessed 6 March 2017).
2. Roberto Vitali, “For Elliot from a Friend,” International
Association for Tibetan Studies. Also see Trails of the Tibetan
Tradition: Papers for Elliot Sperling, edited by Roberto Vitali
(Amnye Machen Institute: 2014).
3. Elliot Sperling, “5th Karmapa and Some Aspects of
the Relationship Between Tibet and the Early Ming,” in
Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, eds., Tibetans Studies
in Honour of Hugh Richardson, Warminster, 1980 (published
in translation as Shiboling, “Wushi Gamaba yiji Xizang
he Mingchu de guanxi yaolue,” in Guowai Zangxue yanjiu
yiwenji, vol. 2, Lhasa, 1987), pp.279-289.
4. Ibid.
5. Elliot Sperling, “Divide and Rule Policy in Tibet,” in
Ernst Steinkellner, ed., Contributions on Tibetan Language,
History and Culture. Proceedings of the Csoma de Koros
Symposium Held at Velm-Vienna, Austria, 13-19 September
1981, Vienna, 1983, pp.339-356.
6. See Tsering Woeser, “A Chronicle of Elliot Sperling,”
in Trails of the Tibetan Tradition: Papers for Elliot Sperling,
Roberto Vitali eds., (published by Amnye Machen Institute,
2014).
7. He has criticized the Dalai Lama’s ‘Middle Way
Approach’ to dealing with China as too conciliatory. See
his article Self-Delusion, <http://info-buddhism.com/SelfDelusion_Middle-Way-Approach_Dalai-Lama_Exile_CTA_
Sperling.html#f1>.
'''Tenzin Dorjee''' is a writer, activist, and a researcher at Tibet
Action Institute. His monograph The Tibetan Nonviolent
Struggle: A Strategic and Historical Analysis was published
in 2015 by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
His writings have been published in various forums including
Global Post, Courier International, Tibetan Review, Tibet
Times, and the CNN blog. He is a regular commentator
on Tibet-related issues for Radio Free Asia, Voice of
America, and Voice of Tibet. He served as the Executive
Director of Students for a Free Tibet from 2009 to 2013.
An earlier version of this obituary was published in the
Huffington Post <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/remembering-elliot-sperling-personal-reflections-on_b_5899c990e4b0985224db59cb>.
Vincent Eltschinger is Professor for Indian Buddhism at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL Research University, Paris. His research work focuses on the religious background, the apologetic dimensions and the intellectual genealogy of late Indian Buddhist philosophy. His publications include numerous books and articles dedicated to various aspects of the Indian Buddhists’ polemical interaction with orthodox Brahmanism from Aśvaghoṣa to late Indian Buddhist epistemologists. Mention can be made of Penser l’autorité des Écritures (2007), Caste and Buddhist Philosophy (2012), Buddhist Epistemology as Apologetics (2014), Self, No-Self and Salvation (2013, together with Isabelle Ratié). Vincent Eltschinger has been teaching at various universities including Budapest, Lausanne, Leiden, Leipzig, Tokyo, Venice, Vienna, and Zurich. ([https://ephe.academia.edu/VincentEltschinger Source Accessed March 18, 2019]) +
Venerable Elvin W. Jones is a prominent Buddhist translator and scholar affiliated with the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism. He worked closely with Geshe Lhundub Sopa, a pioneering figure in bringing Buddhist teachings to the Western world, serving as his assistant and collaborator in Madison, Wisconsin.
Jones is known for his significant contributions to Buddhist scholarship and translation. He co-authored the ''Primer of Literary Tibetan'' with Geshe Sopa, establishing himself as an important figure in Tibetan language education for Western students. His translation work includes major Buddhist philosophical texts, most notably the collaborative translation of Kamalasīla's ''Stages of Meditation'', undertaken with Geshe Lhundub Sopa and John Newman.
In addition to his translation endeavors, Venerable Jones served as an author and editor of ''Mahayana Buddhist Meditation: Theory and Practice'', compiled with Minoru Kiyota, a scholarly work that explores Buddhist meditation practices and theory for Western audiences.
Through his affiliation with Geshe Sopa and his work at Deer Park Buddhist Center in Oregon, Wisconsin, Venerable Elvin W. Jones has played an important role in making Tibetan Buddhist teachings, texts, and practices accessible to Western practitioners and scholars. +
From 1993 to 2003 Elías-Manuel Capriles-Arias filled the Chair of Eastern Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of The Andes, Mérida, Venezuela (originally ascribed to the Dean’s Office and then to the Department of Philosophy). Thereafter he has been ascribed to the Center of Studies on Africa and Asia, School of History, same Faculty and University, where he teaches Philosophy and elective subjects on the problems of globalization, Buddhism, Asian Religions and Eastern Arts.
Besides teaching at the University, Capriles is an instructor of Buddhism and Dzogchen certified by the Tibetan Master of these disciplines, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu; in this field, he has taught in Venezuela, Peru, Spain, Costa Rica and Chile. ([https://eliascapriles.com/ Source Accessed Apr 17, 2023]) +
Emer O’Hagan is Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Her primary interests include the role of self-knowledge in moral agency and moral development, constitutivism in metaethics, and Kantian ethics. Some of her recent
publications include "Self-Knowledge and the Development of Virtue," in N. Birondo and S. Braun (eds.), ''Virtue's Reasons: New Essays on Virtue, Character, and Reasons'' (Routledge, 2017); "Shmagents, Realism and Constitutivism About
Rational Norms," in ''The Journal of Value Inquiry'' 2014; "Self-Knowledge and Moral Stupidity," in ''Ratio'' 2012; and "Animals, Agency, and Obligation in Kantian Ethics," in ''Social Theory and Practice'' 2009. (Source: [https://research.tsadra.org/index.php/Ethics_without_Self,_Dharma_without_Atman Ethics without Self, Dharma without Atman]) +
Acharya Emily Bower started meditating and studying with the Shambhala community in 1987 in Berkeley, California. She went on to live on staff at Karme Chöling for three years, and then moved to Boston, Massachusetts to work as a book editor specializing in Buddhism, yoga, and other spiritual traditions.
She worked for Shambhala Publications for a total of ten years. She is fortunate to have been able to work on books with many spiritual teachers, including Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.
She lives and works now in Los Angeles as a book editor and publishing consultant, and is a co-founder of Dharma Spring, a curated online Buddhist bookshop, launching in 2017. She is an editor for 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, an international non-profit initiative to translate all of the Buddha’s words into modern languages and to make them available to everyone, free of charge.
In her service as a senior teacher in the Shambhala community, she leads both extended retreats and weekend programs. She especially enjoys presenting on themes that bring practical application to our wisdom traditions. ([https://shambhalaonline.org/acharya-emily-bower/ Source Accessed Mar 18, 2022]) +
Emily McRae is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, ethics, moral psychology, and feminism. She has published articles on issues in comparative moral psychology
in both Western and Asian philosophical journals and volumes, including ''American Philosophy Quarterly'', ''History of Philosophy Quarterly'', ''Journal of Religious Ethics'', ''Philosophy East and West'', and ''The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics''. Her translation, with Jay Garfield, of the nineteenth-century Tibetan master Patrul Rinpoche's ''Essential Jewel of Holy Practice'' has been published by Wisdom Publications (2017). She has also coedited, with Dr. George Yancy, a volume entitled ''Buddhism and Whiteness: Critical Reflections'' (Lexington Books, 2019). (Adapted from Source: [https://research.tsadra.org/index.php/Ethics_without_Self,_Dharma_without_Atman Ethics without Self, Dharma without Atman]) +
Emma Martin is Lecturer in Museology at the University of Manchester and Head of Ethnology at the National Museums in Liverpool, UK. She received her doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2014 for her thesis, “Charles Bell’s collection of ‘curios:’ Negotiating Tibetan material culture on the Anglo-Tibetan borderlands, 1900–1945.” ([https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/transcultural/article/view/23538 Source Accessed Mar 8, 2023]) +
Elizabeth English (Locana) received her MA and PhD in Classical Indian Religion from Oxford University and is a member of the Western Buddhist Order. She is the founder and director of Life at Work, a right-livelihood business that provides consultancy and training for supporting people, teams, and organizations through communication skills and conflict resolution. ([https://www.amazon.com/Vajrayogini-Visualization-Rituals-Studies-Buddhism/dp/086171329X Source: Amazon Page]) +
Ensho Kanakura was born in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. After graduating from Tokyo University (1920) Ensho Kanakura began studying Indian philosophy and the doctrines of Buddhism. He was a professor of Tohoku University. +
Erberto Lo Bue obtained a Ph.D in Tibetan Studies at the School of Oriental and African
Studies (University of London) and became Associate Professor at Bologna University, where he taught the history of Indian and Central Asian art, and classical Tibetan. From 1972 he carried out research in Nepal, India and Tibet, his fieldwork in Ladakh starting in 1978 and continuing in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005. Most of his over 190 publications are related to Tibetan, Newar and Indian religious art. (Art and Architecture in Ladakh, list of contributors, vii) +
Eric came to Santa Clara University with over a decade of experience in higher education. Eric received his PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan, where he taught Buddhist and Asian Studies courses, worked with faculty on integrating technology into their teaching, and facilitated interdisciplinary workshops. He also received his M.A. in Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, where he taught religion courses, and his B.A. in Religious Studies from Occidental College. At SCU, Eric coordinates instructional technology support and trainings, and works with faculty in digital media assignment collaborations, course design consultations, and in Technology and Teaching Workshops.
([https://www.scu.edu/is/academic-technology/about-us/staff-profiles/haynie.html Source Accessed April 24, 2023]) +
Eric Huntington is currently a fellow at the Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice University and previously held a postdoctoral fellow in the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University. He is the author of Creating the Universe: Depictions of the Cosmos in Himalayan Buddhism (University of Washington, 2018), which exposes the complex cosmological thinking behind many different examples of Buddhist literature, ritual, art, and architecture. His current research investigates new approaches to Buddhist visual and material cultures. He has also published articles on the role of illustrations in ritual manuscripts and visual, spatial, and temporal understandings of tantric mandalas. Prior to joining Stanford, he served as a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University and received his PhD from the University of Chicago. (Source: [https://erichuntington.org/ Personal Website]) +
Eric Greene is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies. He received his B.A. in Mathematics from Berkeley in 1998, followed by his M.A. (Asian Studies) and Ph.D. (Buddhist Studies) in 2012. He specializes in the history of medieval Chinese Buddhism, particularly the emergence of Chinese forms of Buddhism from the interaction between Indian Buddhism and indigenous Chinese culture. Much of his recent research has focused on Buddhist meditation practices, including the history of the transmission on Indian meditation practices to China, the development of distinctly Chinese forms of Buddhist meditation, and Buddhist rituals of confession and atonement. He is currently writing a book on the uses of meditative visionary experience as evidence of sanctity within early Chinese Buddhism. In addition to these topics, he has published articles on the early history of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, Buddhist paintings from the Silk Roads, and the influence of modern psychological terminology on the Western interpretation of Buddhism. He is also presently working on a new project concerning the practice of translation - from Indian languages to Chinese - in early Chinese Buddhism. He teaches undergraduate classes on Buddhism in East Asia, Zen Buddhism, ritual in East Asian Buddhism, and mysticism and meditation in Buddhism and East Asia, and graduate seminars on Chinese Buddhist studies and Chinese Buddhist texts.<br> After completing his Ph.D. in 2012, Eric took a position at the University of Bristol (UK), where he taught East Asian Religions until coming to Yale in 2015. ([https://religiousstudies.yale.edu/people/eric-greene Source Accessed July 21, 2020]) +
Lama Eric Triebelhorn first came to KCC (Kagyu Changchub Chuling, Portland, OR) not long after graduating from college and quickly immersed himself in the center’s activities. He served as Board president for four years and was the first caretaker of our retreat land, Ser Chö Ösel Ling. In 2002, he moved to India to study Tibetan language and practice with Kyabje Bokar Rinpoche. He requested and was finally granted permission to participate in a traditional Shangpa three-year retreat at Bokar Monastery, which he completed in 2008. Following retreat, Lama Eric translated for Khenpo Lodrö Donyö Rinpoche, Gyaltsab Rinpoche, and others and eventually served as an English teacher for the reincarnation of his teacher, Bokar Rinpoche. Lama Eric became KCC’s resident lama in January 2020.
(Source: [https://kcc.org/program-council-members/ Adapted from KCC Website]) +
Erica Ogle has had a range of professional and personal experiences with children. She writes books primarily for children with the hope to instill lasting wisdom and happiness. Occasionally, she writes a book for adults too. ([https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C4K131SB/about Adapted from Source Jan 7, 2025]) +
Erich Frauwallner studied classical philology and Sanskrit philology in Vienna. He taught Indology from 1928-29 at the University of Vienna. His primary interest was Buddhist logic and epistemology, and later Indian Brahmanic philosophy, with close attention to primary source texts.
In 1938 Frauwallner joined the Department of Indian and Iranian philosophy at the Oriental Institute after its Jewish director, Bernhard Geiger, was forced out. Frauwallner became director in 1942. He was called up for military service in 1943 but did not serve, continuing to teach until 1945 when he lost his position due to his Nazi Party membership (dating to 1932). In 1951, after a review, he was reinstated. In 1955 the Institute for Indology founded, which he chaired, becoming a full professor in 1960.
Donald S. Lopez, Jr., professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, called Frauwallner "one of the great Buddhist scholars of this [the twentieth] century." ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Frauwallner Source Accessed Jun 11, 2019]) +
Haenisch was the architect German Sinology never had. He was primarily a Mongolist, but impinged on Sinology as well, usually to its benefit.
His family background was official and military. He studied Sinology, Mongol, and Manchu under Wilhelm Grube at Berlin. Haenisch was himself a Berliner, and Berlin was to remain the center of his career. From it he made four significant departures. The first was immediate: after his studies with Grube, he went to China to teach at military schools in Wuchang and Changsha from 1904 to 1911. During this time he also traveled in China and in Eastern Tibet. In 1912 he returned to Germany and joined the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde. In 1913 he completed his Habilitation and became an assistant to F W Müller. Another military interlude followed, as an officer during WW1. In 1920 he made a handsome return to civilian life as Professor of Mongol and Manchu at Berlin.
In 1925 he moved to the Chair of Sinology at Leipzig, in succession to Conrady, and his publications take for a while a Sinological turn, starting with an article on Some Sinological Desiderata (1926): taking stock of the field and setting priorities. Due to Haenisch's protracted absence from Leipzig while traveling in China and Mongolia, the Conrady student Eduard Erkes was appointed in 1928 to fill in for him as an Ausserordentlicher Professor. The three volumes of Haenisch's Lehrgang der Chinesischen Schriftsprache appeared over the years 1929-1933. It must be said that this is not the wonderful thing it is sometimes said to be. Presumably it was an improvement over whatever people had been doing previously. All the more credit, then, (let it be said in a parenthesis) to those of the pioneering generation who achieved a sometimes staggering competence in the language.
Haenisch returned to Berlin in 1932, with a renewed emphasis on things Inner Asian. A first instalment of his translation of the Secret History of the Mongols had been published in 1931, and further instalments appeared in 1937 and 1939. It has been judged by those who know that it is superior to the never-published version - the Secret Translation of the Secret History - by the indomitable but procrastinating Pelliot. Haenish picked up the retired Franke's student George Kennedy, and supervised Kennedy's thesis, which was on a legal topic, and based on the Tang Code. He also put in a word at Berlin for a Sinological resource which had been formally banned by Pelliot in 1929: the fractious von Zach. Looking back on that interlude, Haenisch put it this way: "Of course one could not mention his name in De Groot's presence. When I once dared to break a lance for him, he came straight back at me, "Do you want Sinology in Berlin to be built, or demolished?" Well, naturally, built, but Zach ought to help with the building. This positive contribution he himself unfortunately denied us, by the often intemperate tone of his criticisms."
Haenisch, a decent man as well as a careful scholar, had protested German treatment of Duyvendak in the occupied Netherlands, and distinguished himself in 1944 as the only German Sinologist to sign a petition for the release of Henri Maspero, then a prisoner at Buchenwald. There had been more international spirit, and it had had better success, in the case of Henri Pirenne in WW1, who as a result of international and German scholarly pressure was released from a prison camp in Belgium and transferred to the house arrest situation in rural Germany, where, partly out of his head, he was able to put down what became his masterpiece: the Histoire de l'Europe. Had the world received a similar final synthesis from Maspero, Haenisch would have deserved mention on the dedication page. It was not to be.
Germany had been hard on Sinology before and during WW2, driving many of the most promising people out of the country. And WW2 had been hard on Germany. Haenisch was one of those left to become the statesmen of the Sinological building effort after 1945. Of the prewar centers that still existed (among them Heidelberg, Göttingen, Hamburg), Berlin was a divided city, and Leipzig had come under Soviet domination. Haenisch, making his fourth and final excursus from Berlin, founded in 1946 the Sinological Section of the Institute of East Asian Studies at Munich, the first such center to be created in postwar Germany. Conditions were not ideal: "In summer, we sometimes held classes in corridors and sometimes in wooden shacks; in winter, we held them in the department's only undamaged building. Eventually we got a building of our own which served as library, classroom and office." ([https://web.archive.org/web/20170209043749/http://www.umass.edu/wsp/resources/profiles/haenisch.html Source Accessed Jan 25, 2022])
