Xu Fancheng
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Xu Fancheng (Chinese: 徐梵澄) (1909 - 2000) is a Chinese scholar and translator. He is famous for rendering 50 of the Upanishads into classical Chinese. He has also translated Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra, Kalidasa's lyric poem Meghaduuta (Cloud Messenger), and many of Sri Aurobindo's works into Chinese.
He was born into a wealthy family in Changsha, Hunan, and was a friend and student of Lu Xun in his early life. From 1927 to 1929, he studied History at Zhongshan University and then Western Literature in Fudan University. He studied Fine Art and Philosophy in Germany from 1929 to 1932.
From 1945 to 1978, he studied and taught in India, thus escaping the Cultural Revolution, the plight for that generation of Chinese intellectuals. After returning to China, he worked as a researcher in the Research Institute of World Religions of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He was familiar with Greek, Latin, English, French, as well as Sanskrit and German. A 16-volume of his complete works was published in 2006.
[edit] External links
- Some of his works on-line
- A memoire (in Chinese)
