Lamotte, É.

Étienne Lamotte(1903 - 1983)

Étienne Paul Marie Lamotte (21 November 1903 – 5 May 1983) was a Belgian priest and Professor of Greek at the Catholic University of Louvain, but was better known as an Indologist and the greatest authority on Buddhism in the West in his time. He studied under his pioneering compatriot Louis de La Vallée-Poussin and was one of the few scholars familiar with all the main Buddhist languages: Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. His first published work was his PhD thesis: Notes sur le Bhagavad-Gita (Paris, Geuthner, 1929). In 1953, he was awarded the Francqui Prize in Human Science.

He is also known for his French translation of the Mahāprajñāpāramitāupadeśa (Chinese: 大智度論, English: Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom), a text attributed to Nāgārjuna. Lamotte felt that the text was most likely composed by an Indian bhikkhu from the Sarvāstivāda tradition, who later became a convert to Mahāyāna Buddhism. Lamotte's translation was published in five volumes but unfortunately remains incomplete, since his death put an end to his efforts.

In addition to the Mahāprajñāpāramitāupadeśa, Lamotte also composed several other important translations from Mahāyāna sūtras, including the Śūraṃgamasamādhisūtra, and the Vimalakīrtisūtra. (Source Accessed Sep 30, 2022)

Library Items

Book

Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra: L'Explication des mystères (Lamotte 1935)

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The present work is a valuable edition (in transcription) of the Tibetan text of an early Mahāyāna sūtra of which the original Sanskrit has perished. With this the Chinese versions have been compared and the variants quoted. A most useful feature of the work is the presentation of the Sanskrit equivalents of Tibetan phrases, in particular those with technical meaning. The Sanskritist may thus easily see what precise Sanskrit word corresponded to the Tibetan or to its French translation.

The earliest extant translation of part of the text into Chinese was by Guṇabhadra between A.D. 435 and 443. But, as the text was a source for Asaṅga whose works are known in Chinese in 413–421, a date second to third centuries A.D. is reasonably proposed (p. 24–5)

In his preface M. Lamotte has discussed the texts and commentaries, the title, the importance of the text by reason of its early date and position between the Prajñāpāramitā texts and those of the Vijñānavāda, and has given a detailed analysis of the contents. The author has p. 7 himself rightly recognized how little satisfactory literal renderings of Buddhish technical terms are. (H. W. Bailey, Review of Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra. L'Explication des Mystères. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 8 , no. 4 (1937): 1157.)

Lamotte, Étienne, ed. and trans. Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra: L'Explication des mystères. Leuven, Belgium: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1935.

Lamotte, Étienne, ed. and trans. Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra: L'Explication des mystères. Leuven, Belgium: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1935.;Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra: L'Explication des mystères (Lamotte 1935);Consciousness;Doctrine;Meditation;Third Turning;Étienne Lamotte; Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra: L'Explication des Mystères