Johannes Rahder Dutch Orientalist, professor of Japanese at the University of Leiden (1931–1946) and Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 (1947–1965).

Biography

Rahder was born in the Netherlands Indies, where his father was governor of the west coast of Sumatra. The fact that he requested as a birthday present a library when he was five years, suggests that he should be a precocious child.

He earned his doctorate at the University of Utrecht in an edition of the text of Daśabhûmikasûtra (1926). Because of his interest in Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

and linguistics, he not only studied Sanskrit and Pali, but also Chinese, Japanese and many other languages. After working for several years writing the Buddhist Dictionary Hôbôgirin (published by the Maison Franco-Japonaise in Tokyo), he was appointed Professor of Sanskrit, Avestan, Old Persian and principles of Indo-Germanic linguistics at the University of Utrecht (1930). Barely a year later, he exchanged the flesh for the Japanese language and literature at Leiden.

Publications

• Daśabhûmikasûtra,J.-B. ISTAS, Leuven, 1926
• Glossary of the Sanskrit, tibetain, Mongolian and Chinese versions of the Daśabhûmika-sûtra, Paris, Geuthner, 1928
• Harivarman's Satyasiddhi-śâstra, Philosophy East & West, jan. 1956
• Etymological Dictionary of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Ainu,. Fifth Part, privately printed, New Haven, 1962
• "La satkāyadṛṣṭi d'après Vibhāṣā 8", MCB 1, 1932, 227-239