Soon after his marriage to Camilla née Nordmann from Vienna, Neumann went to Halle and in 1891 finished his thesis on a Pali text, his Ph.D. supervisor was Richard Pischel.

In 1892, after returning to Vienna, Neumann published an anthology of texts from the Pali Canon in German on the occasion of Schopenhauer's 104th birthday.

For a few months he traveled through India and Ceylon, meeting members of the sangha, such as the monk Sumangala Maha Thera and Lama Dondamdup.

Besides praise for the knowledge and learning of monks, he also found critical words for what he considered an adulteration and watering down of the original teaching of the Buddha.

In 1906 Neumann lost his fortune in a bank crash and even had to sell (temporarily) the highly esteemed Siamese edition of the Tipiṭaka, given to him as a present by Chulalongkorn, the king of Siam.