Stanley Weinstein

Lex Hixon Professor of World Religions, Professor of Buddhist Studies and Professor of East Asian languages and Literatures

Stanley Weinstein, B.A. Komazawa University, M.A.Tokyo University, PhD Harvard University, faculty member at Yale since 1968, you were one of the first scholars in the nation to hold a full-time chair in Buddhist Studies. Your command of modern Japanese is legendary, and your early success during the rigors of Japanese academic training –you graduated at the head of your class at Komazawa—showed your exceptional scholarly and linguistic powers. Your book Buddhism Under the T’ang and your coming work When the Gods Met the Buddhas: Religious Syncretism in Early Japan, as well as your numerous articles, and your more than 1200 entries in the Encyclopedia of Japan, testify to your scholarly productivity. For four decades you have been a major force in East Asian Buddhist Studies. According to a review of a forthcoming book, you are arguably the most influential teacher of your generation of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism in North America.

Chair of Yale’s Council of East Asian Studies from 1982-1985, twice DGS for the Council and thrice DGS for the Department of Religious Studies you have always pulled your weight in administrative ways. But the greatest tribute to your influence is your graduate students. Throughout your career you have devoted yourself to their education, and the areas of their studies are testimony to the breadth and depth of your interests and your influence as scholar and mentor. A great collector of Buddhist materials during your stay in Korea when you were serving with military intelligence and later during your travels throughout the world, you have assembled one of the major collections of scholarly books on Buddhism, particularly in China and Japan. As you retire to continue your travels, your collection, and your research on the interaction between Buddhism and indigenous religions in early Japan, your colleagues on the Yale faculty bow in respect.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans