Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t28.2

v2.c15.s2.t28.2

Yang Yunyuan was born into an intellectual family and his elder cousin, Chen Naiwei was Tan Yunshan's wife. He was acquainted with Tan Yunshan since he was young, and thus he was deeply influenced by him. He studied at the Changsha Changjun Middle School, Hu'nan First Normal School and the Central Political University in Nanjing. After graduation, he worked as a teacher in Guiyang and resumed his contacts with Tan Yun-shan that was interrupted due to the chaos caused by war. With the help of Tan Yunshan, he was able to get the invitation of Visva-Bharati University and the grants from the Ministry of Education, Republic Of China (ROC) to go to India. In early 1946, he became a visiting scholar of the Cheena Bhavan, Visva-Bharati University. During this period, he studied Indian culture, religion and language under the guidance of Prabodh Chandra Bagchi, Purushottam Vishvanath Bapat, among other Indian scholars, and also became interested in Buddhism. In late 1940s, he became the secretary of Luo Jialun, the first ROC ambassador to India. Since the 1950s, he taught Chinese at the School of Foreign Languages, Ministry of Defense, New Delhi. Afterwards, he went to the United States of America via Mexico, and became a teacher of University of California, Berkeley. His son, Anand Yang, President of Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington is an influential scholar in East Asian studies and expert in Indian history in the United States.