La Vallée Poussin, L.
From Buddha-Nature
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Louis de La Vallée Poussin(1869 - 1938)
Louis Étienne Joseph Marie de La Vallée Poussin was born on 1. January, 1869 in Liège, where he received his early education. He studied at the University of Liege from 1884 to 1888, receiving his doctorate at the age of nineteen. He studied Sanskrit, Pali, and Avestan under Charles de Harlez and Philippe Colinet from 1888 to 1890 at the University of Leuven, receiving a docteur en langues orientales in July 1891. Moving to Paris, he began his studies at the Sorbonne that same year under Victor Henri and Sylvain Lévi. During this time (1891-1892), he also occupied the chair of Sanskrit at the University of Liege. He continued his study of Avestan and the Zoroastrian Gathas under Hendrik Kern at Leiden University, where he also took up the study of Chinese and Tibetan. In 1893, he attained a professorship at the University of Ghent teaching comparative grammar of Greek and Latin, a position which he held until his retirement in 1929. Louis de La Vallée Poussin died in Brussels on 18 February, 1938. (Source Accessed July 27, 2020)
Mentioned in
Outline of Western Scholarship on Buddha-Nature
Scholars of Buddhism writing in European languages have celebrated, derided, and frequently misinterpreted the doctrine of tathāgatagarbha for well over a hundred years. While some have seen it as a crucial theoretical step to explain how deluded, impure sentient beings can become buddhas, others have dismissed the entire idea as non-Buddhist. Following Chinese and Tibetan scholiasts, Western scholars have labeled tathāgatagarbha as either Yogācāra or Madhyamaka, although most now understand that the doctrine arose independently of either of these main Mahāyāna schools. The philosophical question of whether ultimate reality can or should be described in positive terms, and the ethical matters of faith and practice all come to the fore in discussions of tathāgatagarbha, and scholars have for the most part spent the last century explicating the scripture and commentary that have sought to make sense of it all. To the degree that academics have assumed the role of interpreting Buddhist doctrine to Western audiences, tathāgatagarbha—“buddha-nature” to the popular reader—seems now to be the foremost shared interest of the academic and the practitioner. This essay attempts to be exhaustive, referencing all books, articles, and chapters that take buddha-nature as the primary focus. It discusses only scholarship published in European languages.
Gardner, Alex. "Outline of Western Scholarship on Buddha-Nature." Buddha-Nature: A Tsadra Foundation Initiative, July 16, 2019. https://buddhanature.tsadra.org/index.php/Articles/Outline_of_Western_Scholarship_on_Buddha-Nature.
Gardner, Alex. "Outline of Western Scholarship on Buddha-Nature." Buddha-Nature: A Tsadra Foundation Initiative, July 16, 2019. https://buddhanature.tsadra.org/index.php/Articles/Outline_of_Western_Scholarship_on_Buddha-Nature.;Outline of Western Scholarship on Buddha-Nature;History;Alex Gardner; 
Affiliations & relations
- University of Ghent · workplace affiliation
- University of Liège · workplace affiliation
