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David Llewellyn Snellgrove (29 June 1920 – 25 March 2016) was a British Tibetologist noted for his pioneering work on Buddhism in Tibet as well as his many travelogues. Snellgrove was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and educated at Christ's Hospital near Horsham in West Sussex. He went on to study German and French at Southampton University. In 1941 he was called up to do his military service as a member of the Royal Engineers. He attended the Officers Cadet Training Unit in the Scottish seaside town of Dunbar, and was commissioned as an infantry officer. Thereafter he attended various intelligence courses and further training at the War Office in London, from where he requested a posting to India.
Snellgrove arrived in Bombay in June 1943, and travelled cross-country to Calcutta. He was stationed at Barrackpore, some way up the Hooghly River. A few months after beginning his posting he contracted malaria and was sent to the military hospital at Lebong, just north of Darjeeling. It was while he was at Lebong that he began his future life's calling by purchasing some books about Tibet by Charles Bell as well as a Tibetan Grammar and Reader.
Snellgrove returned to Darjeeling, from where he sometimes went on leave to Kalimpong. On one of these visits he took a young Tibetan into his personal employ in order to have someone with whom to practice speaking Tibetan. He also travelled in the small Himalayan state of Sikkim, and on one such visit he met Sir Basil Gould, who was then the British Representative for Tibet.[2] Inspired to work in Tibet, in 1946 after he left the Army he sat the entrance exams for the Indian Civil Service. This was the first time the exams had been held since the start of the war, and the last time they were ever held. Although he passed the exams, he was not able to take up an appointment in India. Having already begun to study Tibetan, he resolved to find a university where he could further his studies. However, as no university offered courses in Tibetan at that time he was convinced by Sir Harold Bailey that a sound knowledge of Sanskrit and Pali would be beneficial, so he gained entry to Queens' College, Cambridge in October 1946. While at Cambridge, he converted to Roman Catholicism, in part through the influence of his friend Bede Griffiths.
In 1950, after having completed his studies at Cambridge, he was invited to teach a course in elementary Tibetan at the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London.[3] He was Professor of Tibetan at SOAS until his retirement in 1982.
Snellgrove's research subsequent to his retirement was focused increasingly upon the art history of South East Asia. He died on 25 March 2016 in Pinerolo, Italy. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Snellgrove Source Accessed Feb 14, 2020])
Associate Professor Judith Snodgrass writes, researches and teaches in the areas of Buddhism in the West, Buddhism and Asian modernity, Buddhist nationalism, and Western knowledge of Asia. She is the author of ''Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism and the Columbian Exposition'' (University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Associate Professor Snodgrass was editor of the internationally refereed professional journal ''Japanese Studies'' (Taylor and Francis) from 1997 through 2011.
In 1991, Judith was a founding member of TAASA (The Asian Art Society of Australia) and was an active member of the Executive for the first decade of its activities. She is currently President of AABS (Australasian Association of Buddhist Studies). In 2012, she chaired the organising committee of the biennial conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. ([https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/staff_profiles/uws_profiles/associate_professor_judith_snodgrass Source Accessed June 16, 2020]) +
Jan Sobisch studied Tibetology as main subject at Hamburg University (1985-1992, Prof. Seyfort Ruegg), and the minor subjects Classical Indology (1986-1992, Profs. Schmithausen and Wezler), and Philosophy (1990-1992, Prof. Schnädelbach). During his dissertation (Prof. David Jackson), he worked on a genre of Tibetan literature that debates theories of simultaneously practising without conflicts and within a single mental continuum the ethics and vows of sravakas, bodhisattvas and mantra adepts. During these years (1994-1999) he also worked half time in the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project for Prof. Wezler. While working for the project, he discovered among microfilms made available to us the 30 volumes of the complete works of A mes zhabs (1597-1659), one of the most prolific Tibetan writers on history and mantra.
This enabled him to obtain two stipends from the German Research Council (DFG) for studying the manuscripts of A mes zhabs' works (leading to the publication of a catalogue and study) and his documents of transmission (gsan yig or thob yig). The latter project Sobisch passed on to a successor when he accepted the position of an assistant professor in Copenhagen. Within A mes zhabs' works he found numerous writings on the Hevajra Tantra and the connected Path with Its Fruits cycle (lam 'bras). These he researched in his early years in Copenhagen, leading to the publication of a study of the Indian and Tibetan literatures of these teachings. In 2006, he received tenure in Copenhagen and put much effort into building a study program for Tibetan that included classical, Buddhist, and modern studies. His research in the past ten years focussed on the early 'Bri gung bKa' brgyud pas and their unique dGongs gcig, a text that had a tremendous impact on the formation of the bKa' brgyud pas from the 13th c. onwards. His monograph on this work is accepted for publication in the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Studies Series of Wisdom Publications.
Unfortunately, the Danish government began a series of dramatic budget cuts that resulted in the dismissal of over 500 persons at the University of Copenhagen. In order to save the larger programs like Chinese and Religious Studies, his institute leadership decided to sacrifice the smaller subjects like Tibetan, Sanskrit and Thai Studies, and Sobisch was laid-off with six months notice in February, 2016. In the same year he was granted the Humboldt Research Award in recognition of his entire achievements in research to date.
([https://ceres.rub.de/de/personen/jsobisch/ Source Accessed Sept 9, 2020])
After being ordained at Larung Gar Serthar Buddhist Institute in 1985, Khenpo Sodargye relied on Kyabje Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche as his root guru.
After intensive study of the five principle treatises on Madhyamaka, Prajnaparamita, Abhidharma, Vinaya, and Buddhist logic, Khenpo received direct transmissions of tantric teachings such as the Dzogchen, Kalachakra, and the Web of Magical Illusion from Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche and gained unshakable faith in the Omniscient Longchenpa and Mipham Rinpoche. Through his practice, he obtained supreme realization of these teachings.
After engaging in classic Tibetan Buddhist debate and undergoing oral and written examination, he obtained his khenpo degree. Khenpo Sodargye was then placed in charge of the institute by Kyabje Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche and became Kyabje’s chief translator for Chinese disciples. +
Ruth Sonam was born and grew up in Ireland and graduated from Oxford University with an MA in Modern Languages. She began studying with Geshe Sonam Rinchen in 1978 and started working as his interpreter in 1983. She was his interpreter at the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives from 1989 to 2012. ([https://www.shambhala.com/authors/o-t/ruth-sonam.html Source Accessed Aug 6, 2020]) +
Khenpo Tshewang Sonam is the Lama of Tharpaling Monastery, the most well-known center founded by Longchenpa in Bhutan. Prior to becoming the Lama of Tharpaling, he spent many years as a hermit in the mountains of Bhutan while also giving mass teachings on Amitabha and Sukhavati practice in many parts of Bhutan. At the turn of the century, he served as the head of Ngagyur Nyingma Institute in Namdrolling, Mysore, India and as the head of Palyul Shedra, Sichuan in Tibet after he finished his Khenpo degree in Namdrolling in 1998. Khenpo Tshewang received his early education under Wangthang Rinpoche Yeshi Dorji, Lama Gyalwang Nyima, and Lopen Norbu Wangchuk before he moved to study in Namdrolling in Mysore. Since then, he trained under His Holiness Penor Rinpoche and Nyoshul Khenpo in India and Bhutan, and Khenpo Achoe and Trulku Thubzang in Tibet, receiving oral teachings on Dzogchen. He is the author of commentaries on ''Madhyamakāvatāra'' and ''Abhisamayālaṇkāra'' and many other minor writings. (Source: Lopen Dr. Karma Phuntsho) +
Born in the Tsang region of Tibet in 1923, Geshe Lhundub Sopa was both a spiritual master and a respected academic. He rose from a humble background to complete his geshe studies at Sera Je Monastic University in Lhasa with highest honors and was privileged to serve as a debate opponent for the Dalai Lama’s own geshe examination in 1959. He moved to New Jersey in the United States in 1963 and in 1967 began teaching in the Buddhist Studies Program at University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he professor emeritus. In 1975, he founded the Deer Park Buddhist Center in Oregon, Wisconsin, site of the Dalai Lama’s first Kalachakra initiation granted in the West. He is the author of several books in English, including the five-volume comprehensive teaching, ''Steps on the Path to Enlightenment''. ([https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/geshe-lhundub-sopa/ Source Accessed April 10, 2020]) +
Joan Stambaugh was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at City University of New York. She was an interpreter and translator of Martin Heidegger's writings, specifically known for her translation of ''Being and Time'' into English. She is the author of several works dealing with Buddhist and Existentialist topics, including ''Impermanence is Buddha-Nature: Dogen’s Understanding of Temporality'' (1990), ''The Other Nietzsche'' (1994), and ''The Formless Self'' (1999). ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Stambaugh Source Accessed April 1, 2020]) +
Gabriele Staron is a translator who took part in the Translator Training Program 2006-2008 initiated by Venerable Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche from the Drikung Kagyu Institute, Dehradun. She has translated Ayang Thubten Rinpoche’s ''Rays of Sunlight'', a commentary on Zhedang Dorje's ''The Heart of the Mahāyāna Teachings'', a detailed guide to the stages of the path to awakening. +
Fyodor Ippolitovich Shcherbatskoy or Stcherbatsky (30 August 1866–18 March 1942), often referred to in the literature as F. Th. Stcherbatsky, was a Russian Indologist who, in large part, was responsible for laying the foundations in the Western world for the scholarly study of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy. He was born in Kielce, Poland (Russian Empire), and died at the Borovoye Resort in northern Kazakhstan.
Stcherbatsky studied in the famous Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum (graduating in 1884), and later in the Historico-Philological Faculty of Saint Petersburg University (graduating in 1889), where Ivan Minayeff and Serge Oldenburg were his teachers. Subsequently, sent abroad, he studied Indian poetry with Georg Bühler in Vienna, and Buddhist philosophy with Hermann Jacobi in Bonn. In 1897, he and Oldenburg inaugurated ''Bibliotheca Buddhica'', a library of rare Buddhist texts.
Returning from a trip to India and Mongolia, in 1903 Stcherbatsky published (in Russian) the first volume of ''Theory of Knowledge and Logic of the Doctrine of Later Buddhists'' ( 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1903-1909 ). In 1928 he established the Institute of Buddhist Culture in Leningrad. His ''The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana'' (Leningrad, 1927), written in English, caused a sensation in the West. He followed suit with his main work in English, ''Buddhist Logic'' (2 vols., 1930–32), which has exerted an immense influence on Buddhology.
Although Stcherbatsky remained less well known in his own country, his extraordinary fluency in Sanskrit and Tibetan languages won him the admiration of Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore. According to Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, "Stcherbatsky did help us – the Indians – to discover our own past and to restore the right perspective of our own philosophical heritage." The Encyclopædia Britannica (2004 edition) acclaimed Stcherbatsky as "the foremost Western authority on Buddhist philosophy". ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_ShcherbatskoySource Accessed Sept 25, 2020])
Cyrus Stearns has twenty-seven years of experience in the study of Tibetan language, literature, and religion. He has extensive experience in the translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts into English. From 1973 until 1987 he studied with the late Dezhung Tulku Rinpoche, and from 1985 until 1991 he studied with Chogye Trichen Rinpoche. During most of these years he was the principal translator for both teachers. Cyrus lived for about eight years Nepal, India, and Southeast Asia. He has often translated for Tibetan teachers of all traditions during public talks and seminars in the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
Cyrus was educated at the University of Alabama and received his PhD from the University of Washington in 1996. In 1985 Cyrus was the leader of the Smithsonian Institute's Associates Tour to Tibet and China, one of the first groups allowed into Tibet after many years of travel restriction by the Chinese government. He was a Tsadra Foundation fellow from 2003–2015. He is currently an independent scholar and translator and lives in the woods on Whidbey Island north of Seattle, Washington.
'''Completed Projects as a Tsadra Foundation Fellow:'''
*''King of the Empty Plain: The Tibetan Iron-Bridge Builder Tangtong Gyalpo'', Lochen Gyurmé Dechen
*''Treasury of Esoteric Instructions: A Commentary on Virupa’s "Vajra Lines,"'' Lama Dampa Sönam Gyaltsen
*''The Buddha from Dölpo: A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen'', rev. ed.
*''Treasury of Esoteric Instructions'', Lama Dampa Sonam Gyaltsen, Virupa
*''Song of the Road, The Poetic Travel Journal of Tsarchen Losal Gyatso'', Tsarchen Losel Gyatso
'''Previously Published Books:'''
*''The Buddha from Dolpo: A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen''
*''Luminous Lives: The Story of the Early Masters of the Lam ’Bras Tradition in Tibet''
*''Hermit of Go Cliffs: Timeless Instructions from a Tibetan Mystic'', Godrakpa
*''Taking the Result as the Path: Core Teachings of the Sakya Lamdré Tradition''
([http://tsadra-wp.tsadra.org/translators/cyrus-stearns/ Source Accessed March 29, 2019])
Sir Aurel Stein, (born Nov. 26, 1862, Budapest, Hung.—died Oct. 26, 1943, Kabul, Afg.), Hungarian–British archaeologist and geographer whose travels and research in central Asia, particularly in Chinese Turkistan, revealed much about its strategic role in history.<br> Principal of the Oriental College, Lahore, Punjab, India (now in Pakistan; 1888–99), in 1892 he published his Sanskrit edition of the only known surviving ancient Indian historical work, the 12th-century ''Rājataraṅgiṇī'' by Kalhaṇa. His English translation, ''A Chronicle of the Kings of Kaśmīr'', followed in 1900.<br> In that year he began the first of his central Asian expeditions, traveling through westernmost China to Khotan. In the course of this and three other expeditions (1906–08, 1913–16, and 1930), he traced the ancient caravan routes between China and the West, made valuable geographical observations on little-known regions, and collected many documents and artifacts, from Neolithic stone tools to 8th-century-AD grave findings and textiles. Near Tun-huang he discovered the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas, unknown outside China, which, with its extraordinary assemblage of paintings, temple banners, and documents, had been walled up since the 11th century. Many of the treasures he found are in the Asian Antiquities Museum, New Delhi. The results of his work of this period were published in ''Ancient Khotan'', 2 vol. (1907), ''Serindia'', 5 vol. (1921), and ''Innermost Asia'', 4 vol. (1928).<br> Superintendent of the Indian Archaeological Survey (1910–29), Stein was also interested in Greco-Buddhist remains and in tracing Alexander the Great’s eastern campaigns. In 1926, at Pīr Sarāi, near the Indus River, he identified the site of Alexander’s storming of the nearly impregnable Rock of Aornos. Other studies by Stein added to the precise knowledge of Alexander’s movements in Asia. In an effort to elucidate the relationship between Mesopotamian and Indus civilizations, Stein investigated ancient mounds in Iran and Baluchistan. He also carried out an aerial photographic reconnaissance of the Roman frontiers in Iraq. Near his 81st birthday, his long-standing wish to explore in Afghanistan was granted, but he died there before he could commence his work. A British subject from 1904, he was knighted in 1912. ([https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aurel-Stein Source Accessed June 19, 2020])
Rolf Alfred Stein (13 June 1911 – 9 October 1999) was a German-born French Sinologist and Tibetologist. He contributed in particular to the study of the ''Epic of King Gesar'', on which he wrote two books, and the use of Chinese sources in Tibetan history. He was the first scholar to correctly identify the ''Minyag'' of Tibetan sources with the Xixia of Chinese sources.
Stein was born in Schwetz (now Świecie, Poland) to a family of Jewish origin in 1911. As a young man, Stein became interested in the occult, and it was from there that his interest in Tibet began.
He received his first degree in Chinese from the ''Seminar für Orientalische Sprachen'' at the University of Berlin in 1933. He fled to France the same year. He obtained degrees from l'École nationale des langues orientales vivantes in Chinese (1934) and Japanese (1936). In Paris he studied Tibetan with Jacques Bacot and Marcelle Lalou. He became a French citizen on 30 August 1939. Stein spent the Second World War in French Indo-China, working as a translator and where he was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He completed his ''doctorat d'État'' in 1960 on the Gesar epic.
Stein was a professor at the École pratique des hautes études, Ve section (''Religions de la Chine et de la Haute Asie'') from 1951 until 1975. He was a professor at the prestigious Collège de France from 1966 until 1982. He died in 1999. He was married to a Vietnamese lady from the highlands and adopted a daughter of Vietnamese-French descent.
Among Stein's most notable students were Anne-Marie Blondeau, Ariane Macdonald-Spanien, Samten Karmay, Yamaguchi Zuiho, and Yoshiro Imaeda. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf_Stein Source Accessed Jan 20, 2020]) +
I have been interested for some time in the sites and economies of practice that mediated religious life in Middle Period China (10th–14th centuries), particularly as they applied to persons who identified themselves (or others) as “Buddhist.” This interest arises from the conviction that religious subjects and their traditions are not static and monolithically constituted entities, but disparate works in progress, the estimations of which are ceaselessly negotiated in relation to a diversity of shifting idioms, obligations, and historical contingencies. To me the key question becomes one of processes and agencies of cultural practice, and that question in turn implies networks, that is to say, the sites and channels through which cultural data move, locate, and come to be collectively embodied.
I am working on several projects at the moment, all of which focus on Song (960–1279) and Yuan period China (1279–1368). ([https://religiousstudies.ku.edu/daniel-stevenson Source Accessed October 22, 2019]) +
Jacqueline Stone joined the Princeton faculty in 1990. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Buddhism and Japanese religions. Her chief research field is Japanese Buddhism of the medieval and modern periods. Her current research areas include death and dying in Buddhist cultures, Buddhism and nationalism, and traditions of the ''Lotus Sutra'', particularly Tendai and Nichiren. She is the author of ''Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism'', which received a 2001 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion. She has co-edited ''The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations'' (with Bryan J. Cuevas, 2007), ''Readings of the Lotus Sutra'' (with Stephen F. Teiser, 2009), and other volumes of collected essays. Her newest book, ''Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan'' (working title), is forthcoming from University of Hawai`i Press. She has been president of the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions and co-chair of the Buddhism section of the American Academy of Religion. Currently she is vice president of the editorial board of the Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism and serves on the advisory board of the ''Japanese Journal of Religious Studies''. ([https://religion.princeton.edu/people/faculty/core-faculty/jacqueline-stone/ Source Accessed Aug 6, 2020]) +
Mark Strange is a Sinologist with research interests in the history of political thought and the historiography of pre-modern China, in particular between the third and eleventh centuries AD. He has taught Chinese history and Literary Chinese language at the Universities of Warwick, Oxford, and Cambridge. He joined the Australian National University in 2012. ([http://ciw.anu.edu.au/people/mark-strange Source Accessed Jan 6, 2020]) +
Fumihiko Sueki, PhD, is a professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo, the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. His research focuses mainly on reconstruction of the intellectual history of Buddhism in Japan from ancient to modern times. He is the author and editor of a number of books, mainly on Japanese Buddhism and the history of Japanese philosophy and religion. ([https://rk-world.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DW18_7-12.pdf Source Accessed Sep 17, 2021]) +
Hao Sun, born 1987 in Nanjing, China, finished his major subjects of Sanskrit and Pali Languages & Literatures and minor subject of Japanese Language at Peking University, where he worked as one of the translators in the translation programme of Dīghanikāya from Pali into modern Chinese (published in 2012) and gained a Master’s degree with his work on Dvattiṃsākāraṃ of the Pāli Canon. He was an exchange-student from 2007 to 2008 at the Nepal Sanskrit University in Kathmandu. Since 2012 he pursued his doctor’s degree at the University of Hamburg. His PhD thesis centered on the Buddha-nature thought in the Śrīmālāsūtra. He is now working on the project "The Ethical Framework for Buddhist Meditation Practice". ([https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/en/personen/sun.html Source Accessed July 18, 2023]) +
Dominic D. Z. Sur is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, teaching courses in world religions and Buddhism. Dr. Sur's recent publications include ''Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle: Dzogchen as the Culmination of the Mahāyāna'' (2017). He is presently working on a study of the rise of scholasticism and sectarian identity in eleventh century Tibet. ([https://history.usu.edu/faculty/faculty-directory/dominic-sur Source Accessed Jan 27, 2020])
*'''Recent Publications:'''
**Constituting Canon and Community in Eleventh Century Tibet: The Extant Writings of Rongzom and His Charter of Mantrins (sngags pa’i bca’ yig). Religions (2017) 8, 40. [https://www.academia.edu/31878104/Constituting_Canon_and_Community_in_Eleventh_Century_Tibet_The_Extant_Writings_of_Rongzom_and_His_Charter_of_Mantrins_sngags_pai_bca_yig_?email_work_card=title doi:10.3390/rel8030040] +
Surendrabodhi (Wyl. lha dbang byang chub) was an Indian paṇḍita who came to Samye at the time of Trisong Deutsen. The following information has been complied by Dan Martin:
* One of the Indian teachers invited to Tibet in time of Emperor ral pa can (early 9th century). See the shorter Lde'u history (p. 135), where the name is spelled su len tra bo de.
* In list of South Asian pundits in bu ston's History (1989), p. 280.7.
* In list of imperial period pundits in Tibet contained in zhu chen, bstan 'gyur dkar chag, p. 158, line 19.
* Stog Palace catalogue, index.
* su randra bodhi. Translator in time of Emperor Ral pa can. Padma dkar po, Chos 'byung, p. 331.
* Biographical Dictionary of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, vol. 1, p. 565. Surendrabodhi — in Tibetan translation, Lha dbang byang chub — in time of Ral pa can. Mtshan tho, no. 18. ([http://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/Surendrabodhi Source Accessed Aug 18, 2020]) +
