Chen Yinke

Chen Yinke, or Chen Yinque (3 July 1890 – 7 October 1969), was a Chinese historian. One of the most original and respected scholars in twentieth-century China, Chen was elected to the first cohort of Academia Sinica academicians in 1948 and as an inaugural academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955. A polyglot with command of more than twenty languages, he was especially versed in classical scripts including Sanskrit, Old Turkic, and Tangut. His scholarship ranged broadly across literature, history, philosophy, and religious studies, distinguished by rigorous textual criticism. His notable works are Draft Essays on the Origins of Sui and Tang Institutions (隋唐制度淵源略論稿), Draft Outline of Tang Political History (唐代政治史述論稿), and An Alternative Biography of Liu Rushi (柳如是別傳).

Chen Yinke was born in Changsha, Hunan in 1890, and his ancestral home was Yining, Jiangxi (now Xiushui County, Jiujiang). Yinke's father Chen Sanli was a famous poet, one of the "Four Gentlemen" of the Hundred Days' Reform. His grandfather was Chen Baozhen, the governor of Hunan between 1895 and 1898.

As a boy, Chen Yinke attended a private school in Nanjing, and was once a student of Wang Bohang [zh], a sinologist. His family had a distinguished tradition in classical learning, so he was exposed from an early age to the Chinese classics, to history, and to philosophy. In 1902 he went to Japan with his elder brother Chen Hengke to study at the Kobun Gakuin [ja; zh] (Kobun Institute) in Tokyo, where other Chinese students such as Lu Xun were also enrolled. In 1905 he was forced to return to China due to beriberi, and studied at Fudan Public School, Shanghai.

In 1910 he obtained a scholarship to study at Berlin University, and later at the University of Zurich and Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. In 1914 he came back to China due to World War I.

In winter 1918 he got another official scholarship from Jiangxi to study abroad again. He studied Sanskrit and Pali at Harvard University under Charles Rockwell Lanman. At Harvard he first met Wu Mi, who was then studying literature under Irving Babbitt. They became lifelong friends.

In 1921, he went to Berlin University to study oriental languages under Heinrich Lüders, Central Asian languages under F. W. K. Müller, and Mongolian under Erich Haenisch. He acquired a knowledge of Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchu, Japanese, Sanskrit, Pali, English, French, German, Persian, Turkic, Tangut, Latin, and Greek. Particularly notable was his mastery of Sanskrit and Pali. Xia Zengyou once said to him: "It is good for you to be able to read books in foreign languages. I know only Chinese so I have no more to read after finishing all the Chinese books."

In March 1925, he returned to China again, meanwhile Wu Mi was in charge of the Institute of Guoxue Studies, Tsinghua School. He accepted the invitation to become a supervisor at Institute of Guoxue Studies, together with Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao and Zhao Yuanren. In 1928 Tsinghua School was restructured to become Tsinghua University. Chen was employed as professor at Chinese Language and Literature Department and History Department, while also adjunct with Peking University. Chen married Tang Yun (唐筼), granddaughter of Tang Jingsong, former governor of Republic of Formosa, in summer 1928. During this time he mainly gave lectures on Buddhist texts translation, historical documents of Jin dynasty, Northern and Southern dynasties, Sui dynasty, Tang dynasty, and Mongolia. He also became adjunct member of Board of Academia Sinica, research fellow and director of Department 1 of the Institute of History and Philology [zh], board member of National Palace Museum, member of the Committee of Qing Dynasty's Documents. Among the many students at this time who went on to scholarly careers were Zhou Yiliang and Yang Lien-sheng.

After the Second Sino-Japanese War began, Chen moved to National Southwestern Associated University, Kunming, Yunnan, teaching lectures on history of Jin dynasty, Southern and Northern Dynasties, history of Sui dynasty and Tang dynasty, and poetry of Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi.