Étienne Lamotte

(1903-1983)

A renowned Belgian scholar of Buddhism, Mgr Étienne Lamotte was an ordained priest and Prelate of the Pope's Household. As a young man, his studies included classical philology and theology and later oriental languages at Rome, Paris, and Louvain. He studied under his great compatriot Louis de La Vallée Poussin, and specialized in the translation of Buddhist texts from Tibetan and Chinese where the Sanskrit original was no longer extant. His contributions in this field include translations of the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha, the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra, and the Śūraṇgama-samādhi Sūtra. His greatest works were his Histoire du Bouddhisme Indien and his five-volume translation of the Mahāprajñā-pāramitā Śāstra. In the course of his life he received many honours, among them honorary fellowships of the Royal Asiatic Society and the British Academy.

A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)