Richard Pischel
Richard Pischel | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Richard Pischel 18 January 1849 |
| Died | 26 December 1908 (aged 59) |
| Occupation | Indologist |
Richard Pischel (18 January 1849 – 26 December 1908) was a German Indologist born in Breslau. He wrote a textbook on Prakrit grammar in 1900 and became a professor of comparative linguistics and Indology at Halle (1885-1902) and then at Berlin.
Life and work
[edit]Pischel was born in Breslau to surgical instrument manufacturer Ernst Gottfried and Emilie Haertel (d. 1857).[1] He went to the local gymnasium until 1867. In 1870 he received his doctorate from the University of Breslau under the guidance of Adolf Friedrich Stenzler (1807-1887). His graduate thesis was De Kalidasae Cakuntali recensionibus ("On the Recensions of Kālidāsa's Shakuntala").[2] He was conscripted into the Franco-German war 1870-71 after which he became a Bopp scholar and went to London and Oxford. In 1875, he received an appointment to the University of Kiel, where he was a professor of Sanskrit and comparative linguistics.[3]
From 1885 to 1902, he was a professor of Indology and comparative linguistics at the University of Halle. At Halle, he collaborated with Karl Friedrich Geldner (1852-1929) on important Vedic studies (Vedische Studien; three volumes). In 1900 he was appointed rector of the University, and from 1886 to 1902, served as director and librarian of the Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society).[4]
In 1902 he was appointed professor of Indology, succeeding Albrecht Weber, at the University of Berlin. He fell sick on a ship journey to India and died on 26 December 1908 in Madras shortly after setting foot in India, where he was scheduled to give a series of lectures. One of Pischel's better written efforts was the masterful Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen (Grammar of the Prakrit languages, 1900). Two years prior to his death, he published a book on the life and teachings of Buddha, titled Leben und Lehre des Buddha. The University of Calcutta acquired some of his books and named a Pischel Hall after him.[5]
Well-known students of Pischel were Friedrich Schrader (not to be mixed up with Friedrich Otto Schrader (1876-1961)), who became known as a writer, newspaper editor and art historian in Constantinople, Baron Alexander von Staël-Holstein, who became a famous scholar of Central Asian languages and Sinology, and Karl Eugen Neumann, himself a Buddhist since the 1880s, and with his translations of texts by Buddha one of the founders of occidental "Neo-Buddhism", with a huge impact on contemporary writers and intellectuals such as Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann.
References
[edit]- ↑ Karttunen, Klaus. "PISCHEL, Richard". Persons of Indian Studies.
- ↑ Barnett, L. D. (October 1927). "Kalidasa's Śakuntala, an Ancient Hindu Drama by Richard Pischel". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (4): 867–869. JSTOR 25221263.
- ↑ Wilhelm, Friedrich (2001). "Pischel, Richard". Neue Deutsche Biographie 20. pp. 481–482.
- ↑ Barnett, L. D. (1909). "Professor Pischel". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 41 (2): 553–557. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00039095. ISSN 2051-2066.
- ↑ "Richard Pischel". www.indologie.uni-halle.de. Retrieved 2026-07-17.
External links
[edit]- Richard Pischel, Kaschgar und die Kharoṣṭhī
- Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen (1900)
- The home of the puppet-play (1902, English translation)
- Hemacandra's Grammatik der Prâkritsprachen (Siddhahemacandram adhyâya 8): mit kritischen und erläuternden Anmerkungen (1877)
- Leben und Lehre des Buddha (1910, "Life and teachings of Buddha")
- Rudrata's Crngaratilaka and Ruyyaka's Sahrdayalila (1886)
- Kalidasa's Śakuntala : an ancient Hindu drama (1922, translated, second edition)
