Richard Gombrich
Richard Francis Gombrich (born 17 July 1937) is Chair and founding Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. From 1976 to 2004 he was Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. He has been President of the Pali Text Society (1994–2002) and General Editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library.
Son of the eminent historian Ernst Gombrich, he studied at St Paul’s School in London before entering Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1957, with a scholarship in classics (Greek and Latin). He received his BA in Oriental Studies in 1961, his DPhil in 1970, and an AM in Sanskrit from Harvard in 1963.[1]
The author of numerous articles and books, including How Buddhism Began (1996) and What The Buddha Thought (2013), Richard Gombrich is a leading authority on early Buddhism, and credited, among many other distinctions, with working out the dates of the Buddha’s life and death.[1]
Major contributions
Gombrich has become one of the 20th century's important scholars of Theravāda Buddhism. His recent research has focused more on Buddhist origins.[2]
Gombrich stresses the importance of relating Buddhist texts and practices to the rest of Indian religion. Rather than studying Buddhism, Jainism, and Vedism in isolation, Gombrich advocates a comparative method that has shed light on both Buddhist thought and Buddhist early history. He has been an active contributor to an ongoing discussion concerning the date of the Buddha's death, and has argued that data supplied in Pali texts composed in Sri Lanka enable us to date that event to about 404 BCE.[2]
He was general editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library from its founding until February 2008.[2]
Publications
See:
- Richard_Gombrich#Publications (Wikipedia)
- Gombrich, Richard Francis, Digital Library & Museum of Buddhist Studies
References
Videos
External links
- What the Buddha Thought, Tricyle interview
- Professor Richard Gombrich: Buddhism in the Modern World, Secular Buddhist Association
- Gregory, Kathleen, "Interview with Professor Richard Gombrich", ordinarymind.net
- Richard Gombrich, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
Richard_Gombrich, Wikipedia- Clay Sanskrit Library
