The works of Louis de La Vallée Poussin: A thematic overview
(2013) International Conference From Abhidamma to Abhidharma: Early Buddhist Scholasticism in India, Central Asia, and China — Location: Ghent (UGent) (8.July.2013)
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- Louis de La Vallée Poussin once told Étienne Lamotte, modestly, that he saw himself as “the man of the Kośa” (only), viz. that as a scholar he will remain as the mere translator and commentator of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa. The recent issue of a new English translation of his magnum opus could be seen as confirming his opinion. However, since all what LVP wrote as a Buddhist scholar was always primarily based on a deep and right knowledge and understanding of the original texts, and not on general a priori theories (what about he is often critical of his own contemporaries), his other works in the field deserve today also to be read and studied, in spite of the astonishingly high number of them (cf. the 324 items in Lalou’s incomplete list). Before to go into a classified listing of the primary sources (viz. the original texts) he critically edited, translated or philologically commented, it is important to stress on the fact that LVP had always had a broad and precise historical view of what Buddhism could have been and mean in its various developments. Already in 1898, in Bouddhisme: Études et matériaux, he offers a brillant philosophical history of Buddhism which can be viewed as programmatic. Most of the concepts and problems dealt with in this key work were subsequently studied again in more details (e.g. the nirvāṇa, etc.) through numerous articles and monographies, some of them constituting sometime new synthetical essays (e.g. Bouddhisme: Opinions sur l’histoire de la Dogmatique, 1909/1925). A thematic overview of all these works appears here something useful to be made, without neglecting what more or less directly concerns Buddhism in LVP’s “ancillary” works in history of (the other) religions (of India; to which can be added his critics on the alleged borrowings from Indian religions within other religions, or his few essays in sociology of religion or in comparative religion) or in Indian general history.
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Vielle, C. (2013). The works of Louis de La Vallée Poussin: A thematic overview. International Conference From Abhidamma to Abhidharma: Early Buddhist Scholasticism in India, Central Asia, and China, Ghent (UGent). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/24021