Buddhist Studies - Geographical "Schools"

Geographical "Schools"

Prebish writes that:

...geographic associations seem to identify at least two 'schools' of Buddhology: the Anglo-German and the Franco-Belgian. The former (and older) was led by T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg, while the latter included primarily Louis de La Vallée Poussin, Jean Przyluski, Sylvain Lévi, Paul Demiéville, and Étienne Lamotte. To these schools, Edward Conze, quite reasonably, adds a third: the Leningrad school, including Stcherbatsky, Rosenberg, and Obermiller. The Anglo-German school almost exclusively emphasized the Pali literary tradition, while the Franco-Belgian school utilized the Sanskritic materials, along with their corresponding translations and commentaries in Chinese and Tibetan. The Leningrad school is clearly closer to the Franco-Belgian school than the Anglo-German. These are general classifications, but they nonetheless capture the style of the traditions as they have been maintained over the last century.

Prebish goes on to discuss developments in the USA:

Although some might consider Eugène Burnouf the founding father of Buddhist Studies as a discipline, the beginnings of Buddhist Studies in the United States seem inextricably bound to three primary individuals: Paul Carus, Henry Clarke Warren, and Charles Rockwell Lanman. Despite the work of these early educators, it was not until after 1960 that Buddhist Studies began to emerge as a significant discipline in the American university system and publishing industry. During the Vietnam War years and immediately thereafter, Buddhist Studies was to enjoy a boom, largely through the efforts of such leading professors as Richard Hugh Robinson of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Masatoshi Nagatomi of Harvard University, and Alex Wayman of Columbia University. No doubt there were many reasons for the increased development of Buddhist Studies, not the least of which were the increase in area studies programs in American universities; growing government interest in things Asian; the immense social anomie that permeated American culture in the 1960s; and the growing dissatisfation with (and perhaps rejection of) traditional religion.

Donald Lopez emphasizes the influence of Geshe Lhundup Sopa at Wisconsin, and Jeffrey Hopkins at Virginia.