Henri Maspero马伯乐

Style & Daoist names

Henri Maspero, Henri Maspero

Period

Modern

Dates

1883 — 1945

Role

SinologistPioneer of Daoist studies

Birthplace

Paris, France

Life

Henri Maspero, a French sinologist and professor at the Collège de France, was a founder of Daoist studies in Europe. The son of the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, he worked early in his career at the École française d'Extrême-Orient, and from 1920 held the chair in Chinese language and literature at the Collège de France. Maspero was the first Western scholar to make systematic use of the Daozang in the study of Daoism; his papers on Daoist practices of nourishing life (such as 'nourishing the spirit' and 'ingesting qi'), Daoist theology and ritual, and the relationship between Daoism and Buddhism broke through the earlier Western prejudice that viewed Daoism as a 'degenerate form of Lao-Zhuang philosophy,' arguing instead that Daoism was the core of China's indigenous religion. During the Second World War, because his son was involved in the Resistance, he was arrested by the Nazis and died in 1945 at Buchenwald concentration camp. His posthumous writings were edited by Max Kaltenmark as Le Taoïsme et les religions chinoises (1971; English translation 1981), which became a classic of Western Daoist scholarship.

Contributions & Influence

• The first to make systematic use of the Daozang in Daoist studies, establishing Daoism as an object of religious-studies research
• Studied Daoist practices of nourishing life and ritual, laying the foundations of the French school of Daoist studies
• Le Taoïsme et les religions chinoises became a classic of Western Daoist studies

Works

• Le Taoïsme et les religions chinoises (Taoism and Chinese Religion)
• La Chine antique (Ancient China)
• Mélanges posthumes