RemarksProfessor Pirom Kamolratanakul, MD (President,Chulalongkorn University) II Foreword Dr. Norbut Spitz (Director, Goethe-Institut Thailand) III Foreword Asst. Prof. Dr. Charit Tingsabadh IV (Director, of Centre for European Studies at Chulalongkorn University) From the Editors:Pornsan Watanangura and Heinrich Detering V
PART I
Remarks on Philology and Buddhist Studies with special reference to GermanPhilology and manuscript studies
Peter Skilling (École française d’Extrême-Orient, Bangkok and Paris) The European Reception of Buddhism in the Middle Ages 9
Volker Mertens (Free University Berlin, Germany) Friedrich Rückert and the Romantic Idea of a NewReligious Synthesis 23
Ronald Perlwitz (UniversitéParis Sorbonne, Abu Dhabi) On the Reception of Buddhist in Hesse, Thomas Mann, andGjellerup 35
Pornsan Watanangura (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok) The Transposed Heads. A Legend of India, Thomas Mann’s“Metaphysical Joke” 51
Dieter Borchmeyer (University Heidelberg; President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Germany)Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht: Two Apostates of Buddhism 69
Heinrich Detering (University Göttingen, Germany) Catholicism / Protestantism versus Hinduism / Buddhism 83
On Hesse’s Transcultural Reception Adrian Hsia (McGill University, Montreal, Canada)
PART II Religious Culture Exchange Between the East and West 97
Preecha Changkwanyuen (Centre of Buddhist Studies, Chulalongkorn
University, Bangkok) Literature in Buddhist Perspective 105
Somparn Promta (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok) Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of the will andNagarjuna’s Emptiness 123
Soraj Hongladarom (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok) Heideggerian and Theravada Buddhist View on the Motility ofLife 135
Theptawee Chokvasin (Suranaree University of Technology, Thailand)
