Alexander Wilhelm Freiherr Staël von Holstein (, 1 January 1877 in Testama manor,

Livonia Livonia, known in earlier records as Livland, is a historical region on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It is named after the Livonians, who lived on the shores of present-day Latvia. By the end of the 13th century, the name was extende ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

16 March 1937 in Beiping,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

) was a Baltic German aristocrat, Russian and Estonian orientalist, sinologist, and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

ologist specializing in Buddhist texts.

Life

Related to Germaine de Staël's husband, the future baron was born in the Governorate of Livonia of the

(present-day

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

), in an aristocratic family (with widespread relations in other German Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire, Sweden and Northern Germany) on New Year's Day. He was educated at home during his childhood. When he reached 15, he was sent to a Gymnasium in the town of Pernau (now Pärnu). He pursued his higher education at the Dorpat University (

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 97,759 (as of 2024). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of Riga, Latvia. Tartu lies on the Emajõgi river, which connects the ...

), where some of his families had studied, majoring in comparative

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

. After his graduation, he left for Germany, studying oriental languages in the Berlin University. Prussian public records of 1898 show that the young Baron was involved in a duel in Berlin, which he apparently survived. In his second year in Berlin, as the only male heir he inherited the family estate in Testama (now Tõstamaa) and the baronage. In 1900, he gained his doctorate with his dissertation ''Der Karmapradīpa, II. Prapāthaka'' from the University of Halle-Wittenberg. The first Prapāṭhaka of the '' Karmapradīpa'' had been translated in 1889 by Friedrich Schrader, also as a dissertation in Halle. The supervisor of both dissertations was Professor Richard Pischel, at that time the world's leading expert on Prakrit, the ancient form of

, and long-time head of the " Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft", the German Orientalist Society. During the following years, Baron de Stael traveled widely and studied with the best oriental scholars in Germany, England and India. He started his academic career in 1909 when he was appointed assistant professor of

in the University of St. Petersburg and the member of the Russian Committee for the Exploration of Central and Eastern Asia. In 1912, he visited the US and lived in

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

for some time to study Sanskrit. He was in the Republic of China when the October Revolution broke out. The government of the new Estonian Republic, established in 1918 after the

Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919. As the most important treaty of World War I, it ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allies of World War I, Allied Powers. It was signed in the Palace ...

, left him only a small part of his inherited estate. He then accepted an Estonian citizenship but remained in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

. With the recommendation of his friend Charles Eliot, the then principal of the University of Hong Kong, he was invited by Hu Shih to teach Sanskrit, Tibetan, and the History of Indian Religion at Peking University as lecturer from 1918 to 1921 and as professor from 1922 to 1929. He helped set up the Sino-Indian Institute in Beijing in 1927. In 1928 he was a visiting scholar at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, helping the Harvard-Yenching Institute to collect books. In 1932, he was selected an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of History and Philology (), Academia Sinica. Besides his works on Indian and Tibetan religions, he also contributed to the field of historical Chinese phonology. His influential "The Phonetic Transcription of Sanskrit Works and Ancient Chinese Pronunciation" was translated by Hu Shih into Chinese and was published in ''Guoxue Jikan'' () in 1923.

Descendants

Iskander Wilhelm Freiherr Stael von Holstein

Selected works

*''The Kāçyapaparivarta: a Mahāyānasūtra of the Ratnakūṭa class'', edited in the original Sanskrit, in Tibetan and in Chinese, Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1926 *''On a Tibetan text translated into Sanskrit under Ch'ien Lung (XIII cent.) and into Chinese under Tao Kuang (XIX cent.)'', Bulletin of the National Library of Peiping, 1932 *''On two Tibetan pictures representing some of the spiritual ancestors of the Dalai Lama and of the Panchen Lama'', Bulletin of the National Library of Peiping, 1932 *''A commentary to the Kāçcyapaparivarta'', edited in Tibetan and in Chinese, Peking: published jointly by the National Library and the National Tsinghau University, 1933 *''On a Peking edition of the Tibetan kanjur which seems to be unknown in the West'', Peking: Lazarist Press, 1934 *''On two recent reconstructions of a Sanskrit hymn transliterated with Chinese characters in the X century A.D'', Peking: Lazarist Press, 1934 *''Two Lamaistic pantheons'', edited with introduction and indexes by Walter Eugene Clark from materials collected by the late Baron A. von Staël-Holstein, Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series 3 and 4, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Stael-Holstein, Alexander von 1877 births 1937 deaths People from Tõstamaa People from Kreis Pernau Baltic-German nobility Russian orientalists Linguists from Estonia Linguists of Sanskrit German sinologists German male non-fiction writers Harvard University alumni University of Tartu alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni

Life

Descendants

Selected works

See also

Notes

References