The Scholarly Activity of Fyodor Stcherbatsky - an Epoch in World Buddhology

The glorious traditions of Minayev's school of Indology and Buddhist studies were brilliantly carried forward by his pupil, Academician Fyodor Ippolitovich Stcherbatsky (1866-1942), whose scholarly work constituted a whole era in world Buddhology. More than fifty years have passed since his death but his works still retain their schol­arly siginificance, are constantly being republished in different countries, his name is spoken with deepest re­spect by Indologists and specialists in Buddhist studies. His works are also very popular in India. Jawaharlal Nehru in his Autobiography assessed his work very highly, calling him an "authority on the subject". When Presidents Rajendra Prasad and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan of India visited the Soviet Union, they spoke with great respect of Shcherbatskoy's services to scholarship. Stcherbatsky carried on a friendly correspondence with Rabindranath Tagore. The well-known Indian scholar Rahula Sankrityayana, who dedicated his edition of the Pramana-Varttika to the memory of Stcherbatsky, called him the "greatest Ori­entalist of his times".

The Indian philosopher Dharmendranath Shastri wrote: "We must acknowledge our deep debt of gratitude to this great savant and to the Soviet land, from which he hailed, for his inestimable contribution to Indian philosophical thought." In a detailed foreword to an English translation of Stcherbatsky's works the eminent Indian philosopher Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya points out the huge contribution of the Soviet scholar to the development of world Indology and Buddhist studies. "But perhaps the greatest tribute to Stcherbatsky (Shcherbatskoy-Authors) is the accomplished fact that after him it has become impossible to discuss Indian philosophy adequately and at the same time to remain innocent of his contributions to our understanding of it... In an important sense Stcherbatsky did help us-the Indians-to discover our own past and to restore the right perspective of our own philosophical heritage." Judging by archive materials, creative collaboration connected Stcherbatsky with such well-known Indian scholars as Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, S. N. Dasgupta, D. D. Kosambi, Bimala Churn Law, Ganganatha Jha, Raghu Vira, Nalinaksha Dutt and Suniti Kumar Chatterji among others.

In 1884 Stcherbatsky completed his studies in the Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo (near St Petersburg), one of the best known educational establishments in Russia (many outstanding representatives of Russian culture and science studied there, including the great poet Alexander Pushkin), and entered the Faculty of History and Philology in St Petersburg University. From the very beginning of his studies at the university Stcherbatsky was attracted by the culture of India and by comparative linguistics. His teachers included such outstanding Indologists as Minayev and Oldenburg, who not only handed on to him their knowldege of Sanskrit and ancient Indian culture, but also implanted in him a deep respect for the people of India, and a devotion to the lofty ideals of serving science. In the university Stcherbatsky's exceptional talents as a philologist were clearly displayed, and when he wrote his thesis "On the Two Series of Glottal Sounds in Indo-European Languages", it immediately attracted the attention of leading scholars, and he was left at the university to prepare for a professorship. In 1889 he was sent on a study visit to Vienna where the Austrian Indologist Georg Buhler, an eminent specialist on ancient Indian literature, poetics, epigraphy and palaeography, was working at the time. In Vienna Shcherbatskoy studied ancient Indian poetics, inscriptions, grammatical treatises (especially Panini s grammar) and the Shastras with great persistence and enthusiasm, and began to analyse philosophical texts. These studies determined, to a great extent, the young Sanskritologist's scholarly interests, strengthened in him the conviction of the need to research philosophical treatises on the basis of a thorough textual analysis of Sanskrit texts. His mentor in Vienna, Professor Buhler, had lived in India for many years and introduced much that was new into the system of teaching Sanskrit in European universities, paying particular attention to the traditional Indian methods of teaching Sanskrit. A superb knowledge of the ancient Indian language enabled Stcherbatsky to take up research into the most difficult texts on the theory of poetry and, later on, the logic and philosophy of Buddhism.

His studies under Buhler influenced the trend of Schherbatskoy's research work: in 1900 he published the historical poem Haihayendracarita with a commentary and a German translation, and in 1902 he published a long article "The Theory of Poetry in India". His passion for epigraphy led him to investigate the inscriptions of the 7th-century Indian ruler Shiladitya.

His work on the history of poetry in India was particularly important. He was one of the first European Indologists to describe in detail the teaching on dhvani or poetic suggestion (this article, first published in the Zhurnal Minis-terstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya-Journal of the Ministry of Public Education-was reprinted in 1962 in the Selected Works of Russian Indologist-Philologists, in Russian, and once again in 1969 in Harish C. Gupta's English translation in Calcutta in the Papers of Th. Stcherbatsky with Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya as editor). It is significant that this research of Shcherbatskoy's was published before the appearance of the special work on ancient Indian poetics by one of the founders of German Indology, Hermann Jacobi. Stcherbatsky justly emphasised the high level of poetics in India. "Poetics, along with philosophy, grammar, astronomy and jurisprudence, occupied a prominent place among the sciences that flourished in ancient India," he wrote. He also tried to reconstruct the basic stages in the history of poetic theory, taking into account facts from the historical, cultural and political development of ancient India. This was, to a large extent, an innovatory approach, but it reflected the general principles of Russian Indology, which set about the evaluation of the various phenomena in the spiritual life of ancient India from the historical point of view. Stcherbatsky analysed in detail different aspects of the theory of poetics-rasa, style, etc., but already in this early work devoted to poetics one can see his special interest in philosophy, which soon came to occupy a central position in his researches. Thus, examining the problem of rasa, he noted: "Generally, every author tries to solve this difficult question in conformity with one of the philosophical doctrines prevalent in India." His article reflected yet another feature, characteristic of his method of research-he examined the development of ancient Indian poetics, and culture in general, not merely within the framework of India herself but considerably wider, against the background of the development of world civilization, first and foremost of the antique world. Iii the conclusion to his article he wrote: "Thus, a study of the historical development of poetry in India also gives us the features of its likeness to the development of poetics in Greece and Rome and in addition it has distinctive features which make it worthy of the same attention that has heretofore been given to the poetry of Greece and Rome." His idea is clear: poetics in India, in spite of its originality and specific character, should be compared typologically with Graeco-Roman poetics, not only to show their resemblance, but to attract special attention to ancient Indian culture, which Western scholars had studied insufficiently and at times tendentiously.

Showing great interest in philosophy, he went to Bonn in 1889 to work with Jacobi on philosophical texts. He gave particular attention to treatises on logic. (This subject later became foremost in his range of interests.) After returning to St Petersburg he began to teach Sanskrit, but continued intensive work on source material on philosophy and logic, and completed his first major works on these subjects. In 1902 his "Logic in Ancient India",comparatively small in volume but extremely important, appeared. (This article was translated into English by Harish C.Gupta and published in India in Calcutta, in 1971, in the "Soviet Indology Series" under the editorship of Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya.) Developing Vasilyev's ideas, he distinguishes three periods in the development of Buddhism but pays special attention to logic. Shcherbatskoy explains the turning of Buddhists to logic, not only by the development of Buddhist thought itself, but also by a change in the general sociopolitical situation in India, by changes in the development of spiritual life as a whole. In his opinion, in the Gupta period, when the rebirth of Brah-manism occurred and the Gupta rulers gave special protection to Hinduist tendencies, the Buddhists in their dispute with the Brahmans turned to logic. Stcherbatsky considered logic and dialectics to be the weapon the Buddhist philosophers directed against their ideological opponents. In his work he opposed the view of a number of West European scholars according to which Indian logic was borrowed from Greek logic and inherited many typical features from it. He wrote: "Indian logic is an entirely original product, which developed in the natural course on the Indian soil."

An International Congress of Orientalists in Rome, where a resolution on international co-operation in the study of Northern Buddhism and Central Asian culture was adopted, largely influenced his scholarly career. Attracted by these plans, Stcherbatsky continued to study the Tibetan language and literature with great enthusiasm in order to make wide use of these sources in the analysis of Buddhism and Buddhist philosopy. New finds of Buddhist Sanskrit texts in Eastern Turkestan convinced Stcherbatsky of the need to study the works of Northern Buddhism with the aid of Tibetan translations. He was an active supporter of the position of his teacher Vasilyev, who had proved in his dispute with the well-known French specialist in Buddhist studies, Burnouf, the need for a critical approach to assessing the texts of representatives of the Pali Buddhist school and for the wide use of Tibetan, Chinese and Mongolian sources as well as Indian ones.

Stcherbatsky's two-volume work Theory of Knowledge and Logic According to Later Buddhists, brought him international fame. The first volume (1903) included a translation from the Sanskrit of a work on logic by the famous Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti (7th century AX).)-the Nyayabindu prakarana (A Short Treatise of Logic) and Dharmottara's commentary (Nyaya-bindu-tika); the second volume (Study of Perception and Inference, 1909) was, in addition, of special research significance. Translations into German and French bear witness to the high value placed on this work by Shcherbatskoy.

Its importance was very great, especially if one considers that it was written in a period when the study of Indian logic was only just beginning, and in West European scholarship one-sided and extremely tendentious assessments of the spiritual legacy of ancient India were frequently expressed. Many scholars at that time shared Hegel's opinion that "Oriental philosophy should be excluded from the history of philosophy" insofar as in the East "philosophical recognition cannot take place". By its very character Stcherbatsky's work was in this way aimed directly against the Europocentrist approach to the study of Indian philosophical thought, although he tried to carry out a certain comparison of Indian philosophy with European philosophy (including Kantian philosophy, in vogue at that time in Europe). Nevertheless his reference to Kant was brought about by the urge to show that many ideas elaborated by the philosophers of ancient India, including the well-known Buddhist logicians Dignaga and Dharmakirti, were expressed considerably later and in different historical and cultural conditions by West European philosophers of modern times. Moreover, he was particularly drawn by the opportunity to explain the difference in principle between the philosophical ideas of Indian thinkers and West European philosophers. He tried to show in his research that "the opposition of sense perception to thought has a different character among Buddhists from what it has in all philosophy before Kant". Concerning Kant's philosophical teaching, he also stressed that the reader must "in every way possible avoid all that might lead to the assumption that we wish to predetermine the question of Kant's resemblance to Dharmakirti (Stcherbatsky gave a more detailed comparison of Indian and European philosophical traditions in his Buddhist Logic written considerably later.) In his work he also opposed the position of the prominent German philosopher Schopenhauer, to whom, using Shcherbatskoy's words "it seemed that the Indian sages saw clearly just the same things as he did".

Stcherbatsky rendered a great service when he established the fact that Dharmakirti set forth logic in connection with the theory of knowledge. This enabled him to come to the important conclusion on the influence of logic on all systems of Indian philosophical thought. "To discover the full extent of Dharmakirti's importance in the history of Indian philosophy," he wrote, "means to write the history of Indian philosophy." It is exceptionally important that even in this early work Stcherbatsky's historical and social approach to research into the processes of spiritual life are shown in full measure. At the base of the struggle of different trends in Indian philosophy, he saw not only the opposition of diverse conceptions, but the struggle of the exponents of these ideas-a clash of social groups. "Behind the scenes of the philosophical struggle," he wrote, "a vital struggle of people was undoubtedly going on: a struggle between the bearers of these ideas." Another important idea permeating Stcherbatsky's works was the maintenance of the thesis that the arguments, polemics and struggle of various schools in Indian philosophy reflected the opposition of two basic trends-the realistic and the idealistic. "The historian," he stressed, "follows the peripetia of this heated struggle in the field of ideas with keen interest, because he sees in it the struggle ofeternal ideas, the struggle of realism with idealism." It is significant that at the very beginning of his scholarly work Stcherbatsky was already paying particular attention to the study of materialist trends in Indian philosophy, and that this later became the object of the scholar's serious research. He also highly appraised the Buddhist theory of knowledge for the elaboration, by Buddhist logicians, of elements of dialectics. This really was a significant achievement of Buddhist philosophers and it is no accident that Engels pointed out the "spontaneously dialectical thinking" of the Buddhists.

Being an expert on ancient Indian culture, Stcherbatsky, in his research into the treatise of Dharmakirti, was able to reveal other important features characteristic of the development of the spiritual life of ancient India in general. Special note should be made of the valuable conclusion he reached on the incompatibility of genuinely philosophical conceptions with religous doctrines, although he was perfectly aware that in the specific conditions of ancient India many ideas, both of philosophers and religous preachers, were frequently organically interconnected and acquired similar forms. "Scientific philosophy," he wrote, "particularly when based on the scientific theory of knowledge, is incompatible with religious creeds." Proceeding from this extremely important tenet, Stcherbatsky not only revealed the specifics of the general course of development of ancient Indian philosophy and religion, but also stressed the different character of the interconnection of these phenomena in the spiritual life of India and that of Europe. He noted that in "Indian religions, even in those which preceded Buddhism, the view of the relationship of religous creeds to philosophical speculations was not the same as in Europe". The conclusion to which Stcherbatsky came, on the basis of a scrupulous study of ancient Indian philosophical works, was significant not only for Indology itself but also for a wider range of problems connected with the comprehension of the general course of development of world philosophical thinking. Many West European scholars uncritically transferred their own patterns, based on the study of classical (Greek and Roman) philosophy, to India or even denied to ancient Indian philosophers any originality in their ideas and conceptions. Quite another extreme was the position of those specialists in the field of ancient Indian culture, including some Indian scholars, who supported the thesis of the complete merging and identity of philosophy and religion in India, and of the all-embracing mysticism and spiritualism ol her philosophical systems. The Russian scholar's approach was obviously different in principle and reflected the actual picture of the spiritual development of ancient India. Soviet Indologists rightly stress in their works the importance of Stcherbatsky's conclusion on the specific character of the coexistence ol philosophy and religion in India. Thus, Professor A. Litman, in his article "The Contribution of F. Stcherbatsky to the Study of Indian Philosophy", writes: "This thesis has an extremely important meaning for the methods of studying Indian philosophy, for this specific character appears also in the teachings of modern and recent times."

Mainly thanks to Stcherbatsky's work, that appeared at the very beginning of the 20lh century, Indologists and specialists in Buddhist studies, as well as wide circles of the scholarly world in general, became for the first time so fully and deeply acquainted with the achievements of ancient Indian logicians, with the creativeness of the outstanding thinkers of India Dignaga and Dharmakirti.

One should stress the fact thai the prominent Indian scholar Satichandra Vidyabhushana played a major role in the study of Indian logic. Independently of the Russian Buddhist scholar, he began analysing the history of Indian logic. However, as Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya noted, ''There had been some basic differences in the approach as well as in the outcome of the works of these two scholars. While Vidyabhushana's approach had on the whole been that of a dry historian, Stcherbalsky wanted to rationalise 'Buddhist logic' in modern terminology and to offer a vigorous philosophical defence of it." Realising the significance of the introduction of new works of ancient Indian philosophical thought into scholarly circulation, Stcherbatsky appealed for a creative union of the efforts of philosophers and philologists. He knew that the translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan of the works of ancient Indian philosophers would be an important factor for revealing the enormous contribution made by ancient India to the development of world culture, for the struggle against the false assertion that it was Graeco-Roman thought alone that described all the wealth of philosophical ideas, quests and achievements of ancient philosophy. "It is our deep conviction," wrote Stcherbatsky, "that only by the combined works of philosophers and philologists will it be possible sooner or later to work on the limitless wealth of philosophical thought, hidden so far in ancient Buddhist literature, to be sufficiently able to introduce it into the practice of contemporary education and make the names of Dignaga and Dharmakirti as familiar and dear to us as are the names of Plato and Aristotle." Intense work on Sanskrit Buddhist texts and their Tibetan translations convinced Stcherbatsky of the need to make a trip to Mongolia and the Trans-baikal region to acquaint himself with Tibetan literature and the oral Tibetan tradition, and to study the problem of the cultural influence of India in Central and Eastern Asia. These regions were a splendid laboratory for the study of "living Buddhism" and Buddhist texts, first and foremost in the Tibetan language. In 1905, on behalf of the Russian Committee for the Study of Central and Eastern Asia, he went to Mongolia, visited monastery libraries, studied rare manuscripts, and obtained splendid practice in spoken Tibetan. He had the good fortune there to meet experts in Indian philosophy, and he practised translating from Tibetan into Sanskrit. "Mongolia," he wrote, "is living India." He planned to organise a scientific expedition to Tibet, but his plans were not realised in practice, the tsarist government refused permission for this scientific journey.

In order to continue his studies of Tibetan literature and language he went to the Transbaikal region, where he met some lamas (Buddhist monks), visited monasteries, and brought forth evidence of ancient Indian cultural traditions. In a letter to S. Oldenburg (1907) he stressed the importance to Indology of studying the culture of this region. "Everything that is going on here, in Aga, is, in all probability, a perfect copy of what went on in Nalanda in the 7th century. The influence of India has already passed into folklore ... together with literature we have here... And we shall have to study, on this basis, besides logic and philosophy, such systems as Kalacakra and Yoga."

Stcherbatsky was most concerned about the future of Indology and Buddhist studies in Russia, and urged the need for the utmost development of these branches of Oriental studies in Russia. Writing to Oldenburg, who was at that time the Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, he said: "I don't know if it is the voice of a narrow specialist that is speaking in me, but it seems to me desirable to have a department of Sanskrit literature in Irkutsk for the study of Buddhism." In the same letter he once again returned to the theme that was constantly worrying him-the need to make an all-round study of India's cultural heritage, in order to show the enormous contribution of her peoples to world civilisation, to overcome the traditional view, widespread among Western scholars at the time, of Graeco-Roman culture as the cradle of mankind's ancient culture. "Having analysed the whole of Buddhist literature we shall set up such a philology as will surpass, as a younger one, classical (Graeco-Roman) philology, and raise India higher than Greece and Rome, to

which she has a full right."

His trip to Mongolia and the Transbaikal region played an important part in Stcherbatsky's scholarly career, but his journey to India in 1910 had even more importance. Although he spent less than a year there, he obtained exceptionally valuable material for his work on the history of Buddhist philosophy and logic, became personally acquainted with the ancient relics in the homeland of Buddhism, comprehended anew many scientific problems that he was engrossed in. In his report on his stay in India, referring to the tasks of the trip, he wrote: "The purpose of my visit to India, besides an overall acquaintance with the country, was primarily a quest after the relics of Buddhist philosophical literature, both in the works of the Buddhists themselves and in those of the Brahmanas and Jainas, inasmuch as these latter reflected-directly or indirectly-the period (5th to 10th centuries A.D.) when Buddhism flourished in the history of Indian civilisation. At the same time I also wanted to familiarise myself with the present state of the study of Sanskrit language and literature in India and especially of those disciplines which hitherto had not been interpreted by European scholars and were to them more or less an enigma."*<* Stcherbatsky's report on his trip to India was translated into English by Harish Chandra Gupta and published in Calcutta, in 1971, in Further Papers of Stcherbatsky.> Being already a recognised authority on Indology and Buddhist studies, it was as if Stcherbatsky accustomed himself anew to the traditional system of studying philosophical texts. His excellent knowledge of Sanskrit enabled him to discuss the most complicated problems of the philosophical doctrines of various schools and trends with the pundits. In his own words: "Every day, from morning till evening, we spent our time in philosophical discussions." He studied works on Nyaya (Nyaya-Vaisesika) and Mimamsa, visited the most famous centres of traditional learning-Bombay, Benares, Poona and Calcutta. His letter to Oldenburg (April 1910) provides clear evidence of the persistence and enthusiasm with which he studied Sanskrit and philosophical Shastras: "In Europe I considered myself quite an expert in Nyaya but after arriving here I saw that I must relearn it all from the beginning, and that without a knowledge of Mimamsa it is impossible to know Nyaya well. I at once fell upon two pundits from Mithila, genuine Shastris, one of them a Sannyasi. With their help I am going through the same full course of Nyaya as the Shastris themselves do. They are genuine Hindu teachers of the old style, and of course without a word of English... I considered my main aim to be the study of the Shastras, and a tour of and acquaintance with India to be of secondary importance, and I therefore decided to do everything possible to obtain full benefit from my Shastris. It will soon be four months since I began to spend 16 hours a day on Nyaya and I still cannot say that I feel at home in it... I already have quite a decent library of books and manuscripts on Nyaya."

Following the advice of his teacher Minayev, Stcherbatsky paid special attention whilst in India to "finding the Sanskrit originals of compositions which had been translated into Tibetan, Chinese and Mongolian", and to studying in detail Jaina works, so that he would have a more complete idea of the general process of the development of religious and philosophical trends in India. He wrote that when he met R.G. Bhandarkar, he discussed with him problems connected with Jaina religion and philosophy. Like Minayev, Shcher-batskoy went to Darjeeling, where he familiarised himself with Tibetan manuscripts and got to know some specialists in Tibetan culture; he met the Dalai-Lama, who invited him to visit Tibet to study Sanskrit and Tibetan texts, but he was not able to undertake this trip.

On the whole his stay in India was exceptionally fruitful, enriched his knowledge of the history of Indian philosophy, and enabled him to see and get a sense of Indian reality from within, as it were, and to amplify and review some of his previous views. He established close contacts with leading Indian Sanskrit scholars, philosophers and specialists in Buddhist studies, and afterwards maintained good relations with them for many years, carrying on a regular scholarly correspondence. His brilliant mastery of Sanskrit and his many-sided learning gained him deep respect in the most varied scholarly circles of India. In Calcutta the pundits conferred on him the honorary title of Tarkabhushana as an outstanding authority in Indian logic.

After his return home Stcherbatsky, enriched with new knowledge, devoted himself entirely to scholarly research, combining it with the teaching of Indological disciplines in the university.

Buddhism, as before, was at the centre of his interests. He was paying the utmost attention at this period to the work of the outstanding Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, who was considered to be, according to tradition, "the second Buddha". Realising the great importance of the Abhidharmakosha of Vasubandhu for the study of Buddhism, Stcherbatsky made efforts to set up an international project to study different versions of this work. After the discovery of the Uighur version of the Abhidharmakosha in Eastern Turkestan by Aurel Stein, the French Indologist and scholar in Buddhist studies S. Levi began work on the text. Stcherbatsky met him in Paris in 1912 and discussed plans for an international enterprise for research into Vasubandhu's work. Such outstanding scholars as Louis de la Vallee Poussin (Belgium), Denison Ross (Britain), whom Stcherbatsky had met in India, and U.Wogihara (Japan), were all invited to take part in this work. The main aim was a critical edition of all the known versions of the Abhidharmakosha. "Thus, this work begun on the initiative of a Russian scholar," wrote Oldenburg, "and launched by him on an international scale, created a firm basis for the systematic study of Buddhist philosophy and Buddhism itself." It is especially relevant to note that these plans of Stcherbatsky's are being successfully fulfilled at the present time by Soviet scholars: some years ago one of his pupils, Boris Semi-chov, in co-operation with Mikhail Bryansky, published the Tibetan text of the Abhidharmakosha with a Russian translation, and the young Leningrad scholar Valery Rudoy defended his thesis for a master's degree on a terminological analysis of the Abhidharmakosha on the basis of the Sanskrit text and its Tibetan and Chinese translations.

A qualitatively new stage in Stcherbatsky's creative work began in the Soviet period. In 1918 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. Together with S. Oldenburg he took an active part in the organising of Soviet Oriental studies, and in 1928 was appointed Director of the Institute of Buddhist Culture, and later on he headed the Indo-Tibetan Department in the Institute of Oriental Studies. Beginning in 1920 his main generalising works on Buddhism appeared, and he became the most outstanding authority in world Buddhology of his day. It should be noted that he was an Honorary Member of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, of the Societe Asiatique in Paris, the Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft in Berlin, etc.

Closely bound by education and upbringing to the scholarly traditions of the second part of the 19th century, Stcherbatsky's works also reflected the scientific discoveries which the 1920s brought with them. He showed not only a brilliant knowledge of philosophy but a lively interest in new trends in psychology, logic and the exact sciences. This enabled him to avoid the fate of a number of European and Indian scholars, who found themselves prisoners of the traditional approach, and to look at the development of Indian philosophy and logic from the standpoint of world philosophy, with the eyes of a 20th-century man, and to translate the complicated system of Buddhist thought into the language of European scholarship.. In this way it was a new approach, in no way dictated by a desire to contrast Indian culture and philosophy with the Western, nor, on the other hand, to draw them closer together artificially.

Stcherbatsky was one of the first in world Buddhist studies to introduce the new approach to the study of Buddhist philosophy and logic. He ascribed enormous importance to the study of Buddhism as a broad historical and cultural phenomenon, uniquely original, many-sided and complex, which had had a powerful effect on the development of many nations of Asia. Buddhism, in his words, carried with it all the achievements of Indian learning over ten centuries, including three centuries of the so-called Golden Age of Indian learning, when Indian science, literature and technology attained a stage unprecedented in the history of the East.

For Stcherbatsky Buddhism was not simply a teaching on an ethical, religious or philosophical plane, static and identical in different countries and at different stages of its history: he stressed the constant development of Buddhist doctrine, of its categories and ideas, the specifics of the teachings of separate schools and sects. Together with this he saw in Buddhism a range of definite ideas common to all its forms. Failing to realise these common foundations, he wrote, "some superficial observers concluded that in the northern countries Buddhism 'degenerated' and is an altogether different religion". He therefore persistently advised that Buddhism proper should be distinguished from various theories alien to it in spirit, mystic and even fanatic, which in the course of time hung on to it and overgrew it.

A remarkable feature of Stcherbatsky was his urge not to look at Buddhism from outside, or, what is most important, from a Christian standpoint, so characteristic of many Western specialists of Buddhism, but from inside, proceeding from the systems which had taken shape within the framework of Buddhist tradition itself. It was not without reason that many scholars in both East and West regarded Stcherbatsky as the leading figure in world Buddhology.

Early in this century there still existed in West European science a point of view that looked on Buddhism as on a minor phenomenon as compared with Brahmanism, but the Soviet scholar brought about a radical change in this traditional and mistaken point of view. "We can state with a feeling of deep satisfaction," wrote the well-known Soviet Orientalists Academicians Oldenburg, Kokovtsev, Marr and Barthold, "that the influence of Shcherbatskoy's work on Buddhist philosophy made itself felt even on his teachers, Professors Biihler and Jacobi, who undoubtedly under the influence of the new scientific material discovered and studied by him largely changed their old Brahmanical attitude to Buddhism as a minor phenomenon in Indian culture. They and other Indologists had to come to the conclusion that Buddhism occupied an exceptional position in the very centre of Indian culture and Indian philosophy, and that after Buddhism, which influenced it to a great extent, Brahmanical philosophy became different."

For Stcherbatsky the study of Buddhism was subordinate to his main purpose, which was a deep understanding of Indian culture. It was not simply the academic interest of an armchair scholar, but public-spirited enthusiasm, the desire to raise Indology in the USSR to a new level, and to strengthen the co-operation and friendship between the peoples of the two countries. He emphasised the enormous contribution of India to world civilisation. "Her achievements in the fields of astronomy, mathematics and medicine are great, remarkable in the field of law, entrancing in the field of poetry, unequalled in the field of poetic creation, but the kernel of her highest achievements lies in the fields of philosophy and religion."

Stcherbatsky's book The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word "Dharma", small in volume but exceptionally valuable, which was devoted to an elucidation of the concept of dharma, was an important event both in his scholarly career and in the development of world Buddhist studies. "The concept of d/iarma," he wrote, "is the central point of Buddhist doctrine, in which it admittedly occupies the keystone position."

West European specialists in Buddhist studies were unable to give a correct answer to the question of the content of this concept, relying solely, as they did, on the Southern Buddhist tradition, and basing themselves on early Pali canonical texts and considering the Buddha simply as a moralist. The philosophical aspect of dharma, the significance of dharmas as elements, as the only ultimate realities, turned out to be outside their field of vision. Such a one-sided approach led to the perversion of Buddhism as a whole, reducing' this complex, diverse system to a simple religious, ethical and sectarian teaching, whose philosophical content was of purely historical interest. Shcherbatskoy made a detailed analysis of Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosha, the work of the sect of Sarvastivadins. It was not by chance that he turned to the texts of this particular sect, insofar as he considered that "this school is one of the earliest, if not the earliest of Buddhist sects". "An exposition of its views," he wrote, "will afford the best opportunity of examining the full connotation of this term." He came to the conclusion that under dharmas should be understood elements of reality (ultimate elements), which for Buddhists was the only reality.

In his research Stcherbatsky showed that such an understanding of dharma was characteristic of Buddhism in general, although in the primary doctrine dharma frequently preserved the significance of a moral dogma, of moral duty. All the schools of the Hinayana and the' Mahay ana, especially in the later epoch, elaborated this theory.

Over the six decades that have passed since this work appeared, the history and doctrines of various schools of Northern and Southern Buddhism have, undoubtedly, become better understood, but Stcherbatsky's basic conclusions remain important and weighty to this day. New researches only confirmed the depth of his studies in the field of Buddhist philosophy, the correctness of his opinions on the central categories, on the history and the fate of

this doctrine.

The next important stage in Stcherbatsky's researches into Buddhism was his work on the problem of nirvana, a work which, according to the just opinion of the eminent Indologist from the German Democratic Republic Walter Ruben, "could not have been accomplished by any other European or Indian scholar". The fact is that in spite of the length of time spent on the study of Buddhism, scholars had not formed any clear conclusion about the content of this most important category of Buddhism. There was even a widespread point of view in Buddhology that it was impossible to determine the substance of nirvana. "The concept of Buddhist nirvana," wrote the famous Indologist Louis de la Vallee Poussin, lay outside our categories. The Indian scholar N. Dutt took up an even more extreme position, considering that to determine the meaning of this term was simply useless. "Although a hundred years have elapsed since the scientific study of Buddhism has been initiated in Europe," wrote Stcherbatsky, "we are nevertheless still in the dark about the fundamental teachings of this religion and its philosophy."

In 1927 Stcherbatsky published his book The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana in English. He was the first to give a philosophical interpretation of nirvana, and to discern the essential changes in the formation of this conception at various periods in the history of Buddhism and in various schools of the Hinayana and the Mahayana. Basing his work on Nagarjuna's Madhyamika-Shastra (On Relativity) and the commentaries of Candrakirti, Stcherbatsky consistently and precisely disclosed the Mahayana understanding of nirvana, and its difference from the Hinayana interpretation. In contradistinction to many of his predecessors, who were interested only in the ethical side of the teaching on nirvana, which reflected an early stage in the development of Buddhism, Stcherbatsky turned to the philosophical aspect of this category, which enabled him to approach the evaluation of the specifics of the system as a whole in a different way.

He showed that the elaboration of the theory of nirvana relates to a much later period than the time when Buddhism originated, and is connected with the Mahayana school of Nagarjuna and his pupils. Therefore, in both sense and importance, nirvana in early Buddhism is noticeably different from that of later Buddhism. This book demonstrated the approach to Buddhism as a constantly changing doctrine, frequently containing, within the framework of a single system, opposite categories and ideas.

Herein he came out against those scholars (first and foremost L. de la Vallee Poussin and the well-known British Indologist Arthur Keith) who saw in nirvana a faith emerging from the practice of obscure magic, a state of bliss attained through yoga. He was also firmly opposed to the opinion widespread at the time that mysticism was the main feature of Buddhist philosophy and Indian philosophy generally. Just as the European mind was not altogether and not always free from mysticism, he wrote, so is the Indian mind not at all necessarily subject to it. In this, as in other works of his, he sharply criticised the position of West European scholars who contrasted Indian philosophy with the general course of development of philosophical thought, and wrote about a certain special, as it were, thinking of Indians. In their despair certain scholars, noted Stcherbatsky, came to the conclusion that religion or the philosophical system in India was not what it was in Europe, and did not fit into clearly defined logical constructions, but was always vaguely indefinite, a display of dreamy thought, the meaning of which the authors themselves were not quite sure of. He was one of the first scholars of Buddhist studies to reveal the essence of the doctrine of the Mahayana, and to note the most important changes that took place in Buddhism during the emergence of the schools of the Mahayana. "It never has been fully realised what a radical revolution had transformed the Buddhist Church when a new spirit, which was for a long time lurking in it, arose in the blaze of glory in the first centuries A.D." It was owing to Nagarjuna's teaching on relativity, Stcherbatsky stated, that "the whole edifice of early Buddhism was undermined and smashed. The nirvana of the Hinayanists, their Buddha, their ontology and moral philosophy, their conception of reality and causality were abandoned together with the idea of ultimate reality of the senses and sense data, of the mind and of all their elements of Matter, Mind and Forces."

It is quite significant that Stcherbatsky did not regard the development of Buddhist doctrine as an isolated process. He succeeded in interpreting the basic meaning of the transition from the pluralism of the Hinayana to the monism of the Mahayana. "In the Hinayana, in a word, we have a radical Pluralism converted in the Mahayana as radical Monism." Explaining the essence of Nagarjuna's principle of relativity, he showed that "the Hinayanic Absolute becomes just as relative as all other ultimates of this system".

His book gave a translation of Chapters I and XXX of Nagarjuna's Madhya-mika Shastra, and Candrakirti's commentary on it the Prasanapada. Shcherbatskoy considered these works to be the true philosophical basis of Mahayana Buddhism.

The polemic about nirvana, being carried on with such acerbity in Shcherbatskoy's day, is not ended even today, in fact one could say it has become even more bitter. However, the development of Buddhist studies has, on the whole, confirmed his basic conclusions, set out in his book on nirvana. It is significant that his work on nirvana was translated into Japanese in 1957.