Hermann Oldenberg (31 October 1854 – 18 March 1920) was a German scholar of
Indology, and Professor at
Kiel (1898) and
Göttingen (1908).
Work
Oldenberg was born in
Hamburg. His 1881 study on
Buddhism, entitled Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, based on
Pāli texts, popularized Buddhism and has remained continuously in print since its first publication. With
T. W. Rhys Davids, he edited and translated into English three volumes of
TheravadaVinaya texts, two volumes of the (Vedic)
Grhyasutras and two volumes of
Vedic hymns on his own account, in the monumental
Sacred Books of the East series edited by
Max Müller. With his Prolegomena (1888), Oldenberg laid the groundwork to the philological study of the
Rigveda.