Dear Gunnar,

Well, that article is more or less simply a mirror of a Wikipedia
article. However, Karl Eugen Neumann - as far as i know - was the
first one to create the largest coherent translation of a bulk of
important Tipitaka books (Dhammapada, Theragatha, Therigatha,
Suttanipata, MN, DN and lots of ANs and SNs in his footnotes -
unfortunately his life was short but Hellmuth Hecker did a marvelous
job in putting together a large biography of his genuine Buddhist
life. It seems then, that he wasn't only a "Christian theologist" or
"Indologist" who simply translated out of curiosity or scientific
criticism - but he really tried to live according to the spirit and
the letter of the Buddhas teachings .. and that even as early as 1890)

Hellmuth Hecker even tried to complete Neumanns translation scheme in
using KEN's vocabulary to produce a translation of Peta- and
Vimanavatthu as well as Itivuttaka...but it has not the "feel" which
you get when you read Neumann - his translation read a little bit like
Hermann Hesses - who was himself heavily influenced by Neumann's
translations... etc. etc. :-)

best wishes,

Lennart

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Gunnar G�llmo <gunnargallmo@...> wrote:
>
> --- lenni_lop <lenni_lop@...> skrev:
>
> > If you don't know anything about "Karl Eugen
> > Neumann" - the German
> > Buddhist who is sometimes called "Buddhist Luther"
> > because of his
> > beautiful and ground-breaking translations of the
> > Tipitaka into German
> > - you can read about his life here too:
> >
> > http://ken.nibbanam.com/
>
> Very interesting - but whether he was "the first
> translator of large parts of the Pali Canon of
> buddhist scriptures from the original Pali into a
> European language" is a matter of definitions.
> Fausb�lls translations of the Dhammapada into Latin,
> and of the Suttanipaata into English, must be earlier,
> and Max M�ller's project "Sacred Books of the East"
> was initiated in 1879, about a decade before Neumann's
> first translations from Pali.
>
> He probably was the first one to make translations
> directly from Pali into German, though, and his
> version of the Majjhima is more straightforward than
> Mrs. Horners English one - "Entleerung von Kot und
> Harn" instead of "obeying the calls of nature..."
>
> Gunnar
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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