The roots of modern China's engagement with the study of India remain as yet in many respects somewhat unclear, though no doubt the importance of the contemporary relationship between the two nations provides some assurance that much more will be clarified in the not too distant future. For now we can certainly welcome the appearance in English of a biography of the first person to offer instruction in Sanskrit at Peking University, from 1918 onward. This is, as the title of the underlying earlier Chinese version makes clear, an academic biography, based on an examination of documents relating to the teaching and publications of Baron Alexander von Staël-Holstein (1877–1937), rather than a full biographical portrait as such. An obituary included on pp. 242–44, based on a clipping from the North-China Daily News, does give a brief yet more rounded picture of the man, but for better or worse the “amusing anecdotes” mentioned here concerning his imprisonment in Germany for duelling after his initial education in present-day Estonia lie as much beyond the scope of this study as do the names of his wife and his children.

By contrast, the names of academics abound, especially those of young Americans, for the Baron's Sino-Indian Institute, hard pressed financially in Republican China, found support from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, who in turn found it a convenient home for its young charges dispatched to China for their education. It is touching, for example, to see the Baron describing a young Derk Bodde as “unfortunately not much interested in Buddhism” (p. 232), though no doubt he would have said the same about John K. Fairbank, Owen Lattimore, David Nelson Rowe, and indeed the majority of his recruits. In any case his own achievements in the comparative study of Buddhist texts surviving in Tibetan and Chinese if not in the original Sanskrit did much in the Anglophone world to establish the importance of Chinese materials in this field, more than making up for the lack of enthusiasm expressed by his English-speaking students themselves. His institute succeeded, moreover, in nurturing the careers in Buddhist studies of Chinese and Europeans, such as Lin Li-kouang and Walter Liebenthal.

There is thus a wealth of useful information contained in this volume, though readers should be aware that a number of minor problems are also apparent, chiefly relating not to the annotation, which is generally copious and helpful, but rather to problems of transcription of old manuscripts and to the reincarnation of a Chinese work in English guise. On p. 232 again, for example, the Baron commends to Bodde as “still worth reading” the books on Buddhism by “McGovern, Suzuni and de Grort,” where the references must be to William Montgomery McGovern, D. T. Suzuki and J. J. M. De Groot. On pp. 235–58 the section of the “Glossary” consisting of a list of names seems to have no function, shorn of any Chinese characters, save in some cases to give variant transcriptions of some Chinese individuals, and even in that case the one time SOAS lecturer and Tibetologist Yu Dawchyan is not listed under the name that he used to publish during his time in Britain – nor, for that matter, should his employer be described as on p. 153 as “the Oriental and African Faculty of London University.” Bibliographical listings follow the alphabetical order of the first name mentioned, which works well for Chinese, but one needs to bear in mind for example that E. G. Pulleyblank must be sought under the name Edwin, whilst the history of Buddhist Studies composed by Jan Willem de Jong appears only in its Chinese translated form under the name Di Yong. One rather regrets also that despite some relevant listings in this bibliography no discussion is devoted in the main text to the importance of the Baron as a promoter of material from Dunhuang in Tibetan and in Khotanese – surely the former at least lay within the interest of the authors.

Mention of such minor shortcomings, however, is not intended to discourage any would-be reader, and still less to discourage the authors from producing more work in this vein. The Baron was doubtless a somewhat improbable character by the standards of today's academic life, but he equally undoubtedly played an important part in the development of modern Chinese studies of the wider cultural history of Asia, and a full accounting of the careers of such men and women adds much to our understanding. His too was not the only Russian influence to be felt on the study of East Asia in America – one thinks of Peter Boodberg and Serge Eliséeff – but the importance of his role in fostering many of the first generation of Americans professionally trained in Chinese studies cannot be overlooked either.