Louis de La Vallée Poussin
(1869-1938)
Renowned Belgian scholar of Buddhism and founder of the so-called ‘Franco-Belgian’ school of Buddhist studies. He made a major contribution to the field notably through the edition and translation of important Buddhist works in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Born at Liège, he entered the University there before moving to Louvain to study Sanskrit, Pāli, and Avestan. From there he went to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne and the École des Hautes-Études under the great Indologist Sylvain Levi, before moving to Leiden to work with Hendrik Kern. In 1898 he published a major work entitled Buddhisme: Études et materiaux, and in 1907 he published a translation of Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra in serial form. During the First World War he continued his work in Cambridge and towards the end of his life he was engaged upon two major works, the Abhidharma-kośa of Vasubandhu, and the Vijñapti-mātratā Siddhi of Hsüan-tsang, both of which he completed before his death at the age of 69. The range of his knowledge was extensive and he approached Buddhism as an organic whole rather than restricting his attention to specific topics, schools, or historical periods. His major contributions however were in the fields of Madhyamaka philosophy and Abhidharma scholasticism.
