Johannes Rahder (December 27, 1898 – March 3, 1988), Dutch Orientalist, professor of Japanese at the
University of Leiden (1931–1946) and
Yale University (1947–1965).
Biography
Rahder was born in Lubuk Begalung, the
Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which ...
, now a subdistrict of
Padang, where his father was governor of the west coast of
Sumatra
Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...
. The fact that he requested as a birthday present a library when he was five years old suggests that he was a precocious child.
He earned his doctorate at the
University of Utrecht for an edition of the text of Daśabhûmikasûtra (1926). Because of his interest in
Buddhism and linguistics, he not only studied Sanskrit and Pali, but also Chinese, Japanese and many other languages. After working for several years on 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).
In 1933, during one of his many visits to the Far East, Rahder shared a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway with poet Langston Hughes who characterized Rahder as "a famous authority on obscure Oriental languages," who, having lost his luggage, "had nothing with him but paper and pencils, not even a change of clothing for the trip across the Soviet Union." ("I Wonder as I Wander," Langston Hughes, Hill and Wang Publishers, pages 233-234, 1956 )
Barely a year later, he exchanged the chair for that in Japanese language and literature at Leiden University. In 1946 he resigned from his post at Leiden, and joined the faculty at the
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he had been a visiting professor during 1937–1938. The following year he went to Yale University, where he was Professor of Japanese from 1947 until his retirement in 1965.
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
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rahder, Johannes
1988 deaths
1898 births
Dutch orientalists
Yale University faculty
Academic staff of Leiden University
Utrecht University alumni
People from Padang
Dutch expatriates in the United States
Dutch people of the Dutch East Indies