Nicholas Poppe

Nicholas Poppe (August 8 1897 - June 1991) was a Russian orientalist.

Life story

Nicholas Poppe was born on August 8th, 1897, in China, and died in June 1991. His father was stationed in China as a Consular officer in the Tsarist diplomatic service.

Poppe’s boyhood and teenager times were marked by wars, the Russo-Japanese war, World War I, Civil war and the establishment of the Soviet regime. Later, he experienced the World War II in the Soviet Union as well as in Germany.

He began to teach at the Institute for Modern Oriental Languages in 1920 at the age of 23, and 3 years later in 1923, he started to teach at the University of Leningrad. He became the Direction of the Department of Mongolian Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1931, and was elected as the youngest associate member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1933 at the age of 36.

Fearing of being persecuted in the Soviet Union, Poppe and his family then fled to Germany in 1941, where he spend 8 years while hiding from the hunting of the Soviets. And then in 1949, he had no choice but to flee to another country again. Thus he came to the United States in 1949, joined the faculty of Far East and Russian Institute at the University of Washington. He taught there for 19 years until retired in 1968.

He was bestowed an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Bonn in 1968, and in 1977, he was elected as a Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences.

In May 1989, a group of graduate students interested in Central/Inner Asian Studies initiated the first Nicholas Poppe Symosium. Poppe attended the first and the second meeting a year later in 1990. He was invited for the meeting in May 1991, but was not able to make it for healthy condition.

He passed away in June 1991, at the age of 94.

Academic life

He careered in three different places, in Soviet Union until 1941, in Germany from 1941 to 1949, and in the United States from 1949 until his death in 1991. Although Poppe mostly used German and English other than his native langue to write after 1949, whatever he wrote, he wrote them simple and lucid. Even readers outside of the field would find them easily understandable.

As a Mongolist, Poppe traveled a lot to Outer Mongolia, visited and lived with the Mongols. He spoke fluent Mongolian and familiarized himself with Mongolian oral literature peerlessly. His researches were primarily focusing on linguistic studies in the Altaic language family, in particular but not limited to, Khalkha-Mongolian and Buriat-Mongolian, and folklore studies within and related to those languages. He wrote manuals and grammar books about written and colloquial Khalkha-Mongolian and Buriat-Mongolian, Yakut 1, Alar dialect, Bashir2. His book publications on Mongolian oral literature include 11 volumes of Mongolian Epics, as well as collections of Mongolian versions of Sanskrit stories3 and other Mongolian sayings, songs and fairytales. Poppe was very supportive and encouraging to young scholars and always tried to bring out the best in everyone. He gave advices and helps to anyone who turned to him to his best.

Academic writings

Nicholas Poppe was absolute a prolific scholar. From 1924 to 1987 when he was 90 years old, a bibliography of his publications includes 284 articles and books and 205 book reviews. In between 1949 and 1968, while he was teaching 16-17 hours per week at the University of Washington with only 3 months in Summer for uninterrupted researches each academic year, he wrote 217 works, over 40 of which were books, and 126 book reviews.

The secret of his high productivity, as he jokingly described, was that while other people were enjoying “the beautiful surroundings of Seattle, climbing the mountains or sailing the waters”, “he sits at his desk, wearing out one typewriter after the other like other people wear out their shoes”.

Bibliography

Book publications

• 1926
  • Jakut Grammar for students.
• 1927
  • The Chuvash and their neighbors.
  • Materials for the investigation of the Tungus language: The dialect of the Barguzin Tungus.
  • The Finno-Ugric peoples: A Sketch.
• 1930
  • The Alar dialect. Part I, Phonetics and morphology
• 1931
  • The Alar dialect. Part II, Texts
  • Practical manual of the colloquial Mongolian(Khalkha dialect)
  • Materials on the Solon Language
• 1932
  • Manual of Mongolian
  • Specimens of Khalkha-Mongolian Folklore: North Khalkha dialect
  • Notes on the dialect of the Aga Buriat
• 1933
  • Buriat-Mongolian Linguistics
  • Linguistic problems of East Siberia
• 1934
  • The Language and collective farm poetry of the Buriat-Mongols of the Selenga region
• 1935
  • Annals of the Barguzin Buriats: Texts and inverstigation
  • Annals of the Khori-Buriate. First issue: The chronicles of Tugultur Toboev and
  • Vandan Yumsunov
• 1936
  • Annals of the Selenga Buriats. First issue: Chronicle of Ubashi Dambi Jaltsan Lombo
  • Tserenov of 1868
  • Khalkha-Mongolian structure
  • Buriat-Mongolian folkloristic and dialectological collection
• 1937
  • Khalkha-Mongolian heroic epics
  • Grammar of Written Mongolian
  • Grammar of the Buriat-Mongolian language
• 1940
  • Annals of the Khori-Buriats. First issue: Chronicles of Tugultur Toboev and Vandan
  • Yumsunov
  • Manual of Mongolian
• 1941
  • History of Mongolian Script.Vol.1, The square Script
• 1951
  • Khalkha-Mongolian Grammar: with bibliography, texts, and glossary.
• 1954
  • Grammar of Written Mongolian.
• 1955
  • Introduction to Mongolian Comparative Studies.
  • Mongolian folklore: Sayings, songs, fairytales and heroic sagas.
• 1957
  • The Mongolian Monuments in ‘phags pa script
• 1960
  • Comparative grammar of the Altaic languages. Part I, Comparative phonology.
  • Buriat Grammar
• 1964
  • Bashkir Manual
• 1965
  • Introduction to Altaic linguistics
• 1967
  • The Twelve Deeds of Buddha: A Mongolian Version of the Lalitavistara, Mongolian

  Text, Notes, and English Translation.

• 1970
  • Mongolian Language Handbook
• 1971
  • The Diamond Sutra: Three Mongolian Versions of the Vajracchedikaaprajnaapaaramitaa: Texts, Translations, Notes, and Glossaries
  • Khalkha-Mongolian heroic epic
• 1972
  • The language and collective farm poetry of the Buriat-Mongols of the Selenga region
• 1975
  • Mongolian Epics I
  • Mongolian Epics II
  • Mongolian Epics III
  • Mongolian Epics IV
• 1976
  • Mongolian Epics V
• 1977
  • Mongolian Epics VI
• 1978
  • Tsongol Folklore.(The language and Collective Farm poetry of the Buriat-Mongols of the Selenga Region)
• 1980
  • Mongolian Epics IX
• 1985
  • Mongolian Epics XI

References

• Poppe, N. N., Walther Heissig, and Klaus Sagaster. Gedanke Und Wirkung : Festschrift Zum 90. Geburtstag Von Nikolaus Poppe. Asiatische Forschungen, ISSN 0571-320X ; Bd. 108. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1989.
• Cirtautas, Arista Maria. Nicholas Poppe : A Bibliography of Publications from 1924-1977. Parerga ; 4. Seattle: Institute for Comparative and Foreign Area Studies, University of Washington, 1977.