Hermann Oldenberg (1854-1920), scholar of Indology and Professor at Kiel (1898) and Göttingen (1908).

His 1881 study on Buddha, based on Pāli texts, popularized Buddhism and have remained continuously in print since their first publication. With T. W. Rhys Davids, he edited and translated into English three volumes of Vinaya texts, as two volumes of the 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.

Selected bibliography

• Hymnen des Rigveda. 1. Teil: Metrische und textgeschichtliche Prolegomena. Berlin 1888; Wiesbaden 1982, English translation: Delhi, Motilal 2005.
• Die Religion des Veda. Berlin 1894; Stuttgart 1917; Stuttgart 1927; Darmstadt 1977
• Vedic Hymns, The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 46, ed. Friedrich Max Müller, Oxford University Press, 1897
• Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order 1881 (in English translation 1882)