Hermann Oldenberg

1854 - 1920

Hermann Oldenberg (October 31, 1854 in Hamburg – March 18, 1920 in Göttingen) was a German scholar of Indology, and Professor at Kiel (1898) and Göttingen (1908)

Oldenberg's 1881 study on Buddhism, entitled Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, based on Pāli texts, popularized Buddhism and has remained continuously in print since its first publication. With T. W. Rhys Davids, he edited and translated into English three volumes of Theravada Vinaya texts, two volumes of the (Vedic) Grhyasutras and two volumes of Vedic hymns on his own account, in the monumental Sacred Books of the East series edited by Max Müller. With his Prolegomena (1888), Oldenberg laid the groundwork to the philological study of the Rigveda.

In 1919 he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[1]

- from Wikipedia