Ernst Steinkellner

Ernst Steinkellner

Ernst Steinkellner (born 1937) studied Indian philosophy at the University of Vienna under Erich Frauwallner. After a research stay at the University of Pennsylvania (1971–1973), he founded the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna, which he headed until the year 2000. He has been involved in projects at the IKGA and its predecessor institutions since 1986. At the beginning of 1998 he succeeded Gerhard Oberhammer as the director of the IKGA, holding this position until 2006. In 2008 Ernst Steinkellner received the Ludwig Wittgenstein Prize of the Austrian Research Association.

Most of the projects at the IKGA that Steinkellner initiated and worked on are related to the logico-epistemological tradition of Buddhism. The documentation of this philosophical school dating from the 5th c. CE, especially the works of Dharmakīrti (6th–7th c. CE), represent Steinkellner's most important scholarly achievements. In this context, Steinkellner further developed the historico-philological methods of textual criticism as first introduced by Frauwallner. Steinkellner's interest in the logico-epistemological tradition later led him to doing work on Tibet, where the Buddhist schools of thought within his field of interest are still alive today.

Thanks to Steinkellner, in 2004 the IKGA began to have access to certain photocopies of manuscripts held by the China Tibetology Research Center (CTRC) in Beijing. This has made it possible to undertake critical editions of the most important Sanskrit texts in this collection, texts that until 2004 had only been accessible in their Tibetan or Chinese translations. The results of this co-operation are being published in a series founded specially for this purpose, the STTAR. (Source Accessed Jan 8, 2021)