This image is the cover for the book Tibetan Tales Derived from Indian Sources, Classics To Go

Tibetan Tales Derived from Indian Sources, Classics To Go

Excerpt: "In an Appendix to his “Buddhism in Tibet,” Dr. Emil Schlagintweit has given “An alphabetical list of the books and memoirs connected with Buddhism.” Although not completely exhaustive, it occupies thirty-five pages, and contains references to more than a hundred separate works, and a much larger number of essays and other literary articles. Of those books and articles, the titles of about sixty allude to Tibet. To them may be referred readers who wish for detailed information about that country, its literature, and its religion. All that it is proposed to do here is to say a few words about the Tibetan work from which have been extracted the tales contained in the present volume; to give a short account of the enthusiastic Hungarian scholar, Csoma Körösi, who had so much to do with making that work known to Europe; and to call attention to any features which the stories now before us may have in common with European folk-tales. To do more, without merely repeating what has been already said, would require a rare amount of special knowledge; and it may safely be asserted that remarks about Buddhism, made by writers who do not possess such knowledge, are seldom of signal value."

F. Anton von Schiefner, W.R.S. Ralston

Schiefner was born to a German-speaking family in Reval (Tallinn), Estonia, then part of Russian Empire. His father was a merchant who had emigrated from Bohemia. He was educated first at the Reval grammar school, matriculated at St Petersburg as a law student in 1836, and subsequently at Berlin, from 1840 to 1842, where he devoted himself exclusively to studies of Eastern languages. On his return to St Petersburg in 1843 he taught classics in the First Grammar School, and soon afterwards received a post in the Imperial Academy, where in 1852 the cultivation of the Tibetan language and literature was assigned to him as a special function. From 1860 to 1873 he simultaneously held the professorship of classical languages in the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy. From 1854 until his death he was an extraordinary member of the Imperial Academy. He visited England three times for purposes of research in 1863, 1865 and 1878.

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