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Richard Francis Gombrich (born 17 July 1937) is a British Indologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli, and Buddhist Studies. He acted as the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1976 to 2004. He is currently Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Joint General Editor for the Clay Sanskrit Library, and a Governor of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He is a past President of the Pali Text Society (1994-2002).
Birth and early education
Gombrich was born on 17 July 1937, the only child of concert pianist Ilse Gombrich and the renowned Austrian-British art historian, Sir Ernst Gombrich.
Studies
Widely knowledgeable in all areas of Buddhist research - an immense field - Richard Gombrich made himself known with a ground-breaking and still hugely impressive anthropological investigation of contemporary Buddhist "precept and practice" in Sri Lanka. However, his research has since focussed more on Buddhist origins. His originality lies in his ability to relate Buddhist texts and practices to early Hindu and Vedic thought. Strangely enough, a profound knowledge of both was, before Gombrich, not a common attribute of scholars. Buddhism and Hinduism tended to be studied apart, by different scholars, and therefore their influence on each other tended to be missed, undervalued, or noticed only where it was obvious - and sometimes misleading; that is because Buddhism was studied first in the light of Chinese, Japanese, east Asian and Sri Lankan practice, and Hinduism in the same way mainly in a purely Indian context. Professor Gombrich's comparative method has shed a great deal of light on both Buddhist thought and Buddhist early history. One of his most remarkable achievements was the establishment of the date of the Buddha's death, important not only for itself, but for its confirmation of the historical value of early Buddhist texts and genealogies. A stout opponent of the currently faddish "hermeneutics of suspicion" and of relativism, Professor Gombrich has repeatedly shown the value of a hermeneutics that begins with the acceptance of the text as it is and its interpretation on its own terms. As a result, it can happen that his lectures may be interrupted by a listener who has suddenly been enlightened in a field of research of his or her own. Needless to say, he is an excellent lecturer, routinely able to keep a room full of scholars and students listening from A to Z.
Personality and influence
He is also an excellent teacher, in the Oxford tradition that makes dons and tutors almost substitute father figures. A genuine interest in the welfare and progress of his students has resulted in a very wide circle of friends and admirers. As a result, his influence on his university and his field of studies has been larger even than his scholarly achievements would warrant. Scholars from East Asia, even members of the Buddhist monastic order (Sangha), routinely attend his lectures and courses to learn about their own religion. In spite of limited means, even within the British university context (Oxford's Oriental Institute is much smaller than the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies), his personality and influence has been directly responsible for creating what is now described as "the North Oxford Indological colony" and keeping Oxford in the forefront of Indological and Buddhist studies. A man of notable humility, as willing to help a colleague (even when he disagrees with their position) as to ask for advice from a student, he is also amazingly dynamic. His idea of retirement has been to take the leadership of both the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and the Clay Sanskrit Library. The latter is perhaps the most notable of his initiatives. Enjoying, for once, admirable endowments from an American donor, the Clay Library has, in a few years, altered the whole landscape of Sanskrit studies, publishing dozens of Indian classics mostly unknown to the West except for a few specialists. In spite, however, of the impressive amount of publication, standards are high, and Professor Gombrich has been known to dismiss collaborators even of Professor rank, if their skills proved unequal to the level of excellence required. To anyone who knows about publishing, this joining of swift activity and high quality is most unusual.
Awards
The Asiatic Society of Calcutta awarded Gombrich the SC Chakraborty medal in 1993. The following year, he received the Sri Lanka Ranjana decoration from the President of Sri Lanka.
Publications
- Precept and Practice (1971)
- The Perfect Generosity of Prince Vessantara (with Margaret Cone,1977)
- On Being Sanskritic (1978)
- Buddhist Studies in Honour of Walpola Rahula (ed. inter alios, 1980)
- The World of Buddhism (co-editor with Heinz Bechert, 1984)
- Buddhist Studies in Honour of Hammalava Saddhatissa (ed. inter alios, 1984)
- Theravada Buddhism (1988, 2nd edn 2006)
- Buddhism Transformed (with Gananath Obeyesekere, 1988)
- Indian Ritual and its Exegesis (ed., 1988)
- Buddhist Precept and Practice (revised edn of Precept and Practice, 1991)
- How Buddhism Began (1996)
Academic appointments
- Lecturer, University of Oxford (1965-76)
- Boden Professor of Sanskrit, University of Oxford (1976-2004)
- Visiting Professor, University of Bristol (1981-82)
- Visiting Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (1982)
- Visiting Fellow, Princeton University (1986-87)
- F. D. Maurice Lecturer, King’s College London (1994)
- Jordan Lecturer, SOAS (1994)
- Gonda Lecturer, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1997)
- Edmund Perry lecturer, Northwestern University (1998)