[INDOLOGY] NEW BOOK: A shunned Indologist – Ludwig Poley (1805–1885)

[Dragomir Dimitrov]

NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT

A shunned Indologist
Ludwig Poley (1805–1885)
By Rosane Rocher

Wiesbaden 2023
Harrassowitz Verlag
Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Band 130
Paperback, xii, 110 pp.
14.50 × 22.00 cm
ISBN: 978-3-447-11989-4
Price: EUR 36,00

SUMMARY: Rosane Rocher describes the not always happy and exemplary, 
but fascinating life of Ludwig Poley (1805–1885), which contrasts with 
biographies usually reserved for illustrious scholars. The book explores the 
challenges that a nineteenth-century German Indologist could face, reveals his 
strategies for overcoming them, and his character flaws that made him both 
rejected by his peers and accepted in literary salons. As an illegitimate child, 
Poley depended on scholarships. He published in Berlin an edition and Latin 
translation of a Sanskrit text, which he did not submit at the University. Yet, 
he later claimed it to have been his doctoral dissertation. As Louis Poley, he 
made a name for himself in Paris as a brilliant young protagonist of the 
Oriental Renaissance, and he published editions and French translations of 
some Upanishads. He was a respected employee at the Prussian Embassy in 
London until he was abruptly dismissed for his involvement in a scandal. Years 
of wandering through Europe without academic employment followed. A 
transnational and multilingual scholar, he contributed to the introduction of 
English and German into the French secondary school curriculum. Only in the 
last two decades of his life did he teach at a university. He was both a private 
lecturer in Indian culture and antiquities and a teacher of French language 
and literature at the University of Vienna and at other academic institutions. 
Poley's last publication on the Vedāntasāra, published by the Austrian 
Academy of Sciences, was a final expression of his lifelong commitment to the 
exploration of Vedānta.

For more details, please see here:
https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/A_shunned_Indologist/titel_7202.ahtml

NB: Members of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) can order 
the book from the Harrassowitz Publishers with a discount of 20 % and are 
requested to indicate their membership when ordering.

With best wishes,
Roland Steiner and Dragomir Dimitrov

__________________________________________________________

  Indologie und Tibetologie
  Philipps-Universität Marburg
  Deutschhausstr. 12
  D-35032 Marburg
  Germany

  E-mail: steiner at staff.uni-marburg.de, dimitrov at staff.uni-marburg.de
  http://www.uni-marburg.de/indologie
__________________________________________________________