Stefano Zacchetti (1968 – April 29, 2020) was an Italian academic specialising in

Buddhist studies Buddhist studies, also known as Buddhology, is the academic study of Buddhism. The term ''Buddhology'' was coined in the early 20th century by the Unitarian minister Joseph Estlin Carpenter to mean the "study of Buddhahood, the nature of the Budd ...

. From 2012 until his death in 2020 he was Yehan Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

and a professorial fellow of

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

Career

Born in 1968, Zacchetti studied Chinese and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

Ca' Foscari University of Venice Ca' Foscari University of Venice ( it, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, simply Università Ca' Foscari) is a public university in Venice, Italy. Since its foundation in 1868, it has been housed in the Venetian Gothic palace of Ca' Foscari, from ...

from 1986 to 1994, graduating with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree; this included two years of study abroad, at

Sichuan University Sichuan University (SCU) is a national key public research university in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. The university is wholly funded by the Ministry of Education. SCU is one of the top universities of China, and a Class A Double First Class Univer ...

(1990–92). He then carried out doctoral studies at Venice and spent time studying at the Sinologisch Instituut and the Kern Institute at Leiden University. Ca' Foscari University of Venice awarded him a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...

in Asian Studies in 1999.Stefano Zacchetti, ''In Praise of the Light: A Critical Synoptic Edition with an Annotated Translation of Chapters 1-3 of Dharmarakṣa’s Guang zan jing'' 光讚經'', Being the Earliest Chinese Translation of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā'', Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica VIII (Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, 2005), p. 459. Zacchetti taught Sinology at

University of Padua The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from ...

for the 1999–2000 academic year. In 2001, he was appointed an associate professor at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at

Sōka University , abbreviated typically as or , is a private university in Hachiōji, Tokyo, Japan. In 2014, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) designated Soka University as one of Japan's Top Global Universiti ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

. He returned to Ca' Foscari University of Venice in 2005 to take up a tenured lectureship in the Department of Asian and North African Studies. In the autumn of 2011 he was a visiting professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

."Professor Stefano Zacchetti 1968–2020"
''Balliol College, Oxford'', 30 April 2020. Retrieved 30 April 2020. In 2012, he was appointed Yehan Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies at the

and a

professorial fellow A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a pr ...

. Zacchetti died on 29 April 2020.

Research

According to an obituary written by Balliol College, Zacchetti's specialisms were: "early Chinese Buddhist translations (2nd-5th centuries CE); Mahāyāna literature in Sanskrit and Chinese; the history of the Chinese Buddhist canon; and Chinese Buddhism (particularly early Chinese Buddhist commentaries)". Sociotechnical researcher

Christine Borgman Christine L. Borgman is Distinguished Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA. She is the author of more than 200 publications in the fields of information studies, computer science, and communication. Two of her sole-auth ...

gave a detailed account of his data scholarship in one of her books. The obituary from the European Association for Chinese Studies considered him to rank as among the "most distinguished scholars and teachers in the field of Buddhist Studies."

Publications

* ''In Praise of the Light: A Critical Synoptic Edition with an Annotated Translation of Chapters 1-3 of Dharmarakṣa’s Guang zan jing'' 光讚經'', Being the Earliest Chinese Translation of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā'', Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica VIII (Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, 2005). * ‘Some remarks on Peṭaka passages in the Da Zhidu Lun and their relation to the Pāli Peṭakopadesa’, ''Annual Report of The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology'' at Soka University for the Academic Year 2001 (''ARIRIAB''), vol. 5: 67-86, 2002.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zacchetti, Stefano 1968 births 2020 deaths Buddhist studies scholars Italian sinologists Ca' Foscari University of Venice alumni Sōka University faculty Ca' Foscari University of Venice faculty Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford Academics of the University of Oxford