Vasily Vasilyev

Vasily Pavlovich Vasilyev or Wassiljew (Василий Павлович Васильев; 1818-1900) was the preeminent Russian Sinologist of the 19th Century.

[1] Vasiliev was born in Nizhny Novgorod and entered the Oriental department of the Kazan University in 1834.

During a ten years' residence at the Peking Orthodox Mission (1840-50) Vasiliev was able to study a number of obscure Buddhist manuscripts.

Back in Russia in 1850, he was offered the chair in Chinese philology at the university of Kazan.

[2] Some of Vasiliev's most ambitious works remained unpublished and were destroyed through the negligence of his domestics.