Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t20.5

v2.c15.s2.t20.5

During this period, at the library of Heidelberg University, he studied Sanskrit and began to read *Tripitaka* and developed an interest in Buddhism. In August 1932, his father was seriously ill, and he returned and settled in Shanghai. Recommended by Lu Xun, he began to write essays for *Ziyoutan* (Talks on Liberty, a supplement of *Shenbao*, and published *Nisha Zashi*). In 1934, he translated and published Nietzsche’s *Also sprach Zarathustra*, *Daybreak*, *Happy Knowledge*, *Autobiography*, *Goethe’s Comments on his Faust* and the like, and became the first one in China to translate and study Nietzsche’s works. After the Anti-Japanese War broke out in 1937, he taught at Central College of Arts and moved to Yunnan, Chongqing and other places. In 1940, he went to Chongqing as an editor of the *Book Monthly* at Central Library and a professor at Central University. In early 1945, through a cultural exchange program between China and India, he went to Visva-Bharati University to teach the philosophy of Ouyang Jingwu at Cheena Bhavana, he stayed in India for 33 years and turned to study Buddhism and Indian religions. In 1947, he translated a Sanskrit version of *Anhui Sanshi Weishi Shushi* on the basis of translations in the Wei, Chen and Tang Dynasty as well as a collated version of the French scholar Levy. In 1950, he went to Benares (now Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh) to continue with Sanskrit study, and there he translated *Bhagavad Gita* - a Hindu scripture, and Kalidasa’s *Meghadūta*. In 1951, he went to Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry in the south of India and became the Dean of the Department of Chinese of International Center of Education. There, for more than 20 years, he had devoted to studying spiritual philosophy and yogacara, writing and translating. At the end of 1978, he returned to China by way of Hong Kong, and from 1979, he worked as a researcher at the Research Institute of World Religions of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. On March 6, 2000, he died of pneumonia at Peking Union Medical College Hospital at the age of 91.