Bernhard Karlgren: the man behind the scholar

Abstract

The name Bernhard Karlgren (Gao Benhan) is well-known to all Chinese who take an interest in the history of their own language. I shall here dwell on Bernhard Karlgren, the man behind the scholar. I first met Bernhard Karlgren in the spring of 1946. At that time I was studying Latin and Greek at the University of Uppsala, about eighty kilometres north of Stockholm. While I was working hard to prepare for an exam in Latin, I happened to come across a book by the famous scholar Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (Shenghuo de yishu). In that highly readable work the author discusses some of the greatest Chinese Daoist thinkers, such as Zhuang Zi and the anonymous author of Dao De Jing, The Book of Dao and its Power. I was fascinated by that work and immediately went to the University Library to borrow all translations of it into languages which I could read. I soon found that the translations into German, English and French were so utterly different that I could not understand how they could be based on the same original. I summoned up courage and telephoned to Bernhard Karlgren, who was then the Head of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, and asked if I could pay him a visit. He invited me to visit him at the museum. When I met Bernhard Karlgren a few days later, I asked him which one of the three translations of the Dao De Jing was the most reliable one. He replied that they were equally poor. He told me that the only reliable translation of