Fyodor Shcherbatskoy

Stcherbatsky, was a Russian Indologist who, in large part, was responsible for laying the foundations in the Western world for the scholarly study of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy.

Subsequently, sent abroad, he studied Indian poetry with Georg Bühler in Vienna, and Buddhist philosophy with Hermann Jacobi in Bonn.

Returning from a trip to India and Mongolia, in 1903 Stcherbatsky published (in Russian) the first volume of Theory of Knowledge and Logic of the Doctrine of Later Buddhists[3] ( 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1903–1909 ).

Although Stcherbatsky remained less well known in his own country, his extraordinary fluency in Sanskrit and Tibetan languages won him the admiration of Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore.

According to Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya,[4] "Stcherbatsky did help us – the Indians – to discover our own past and to restore the right perspective of our own philosophical heritage."