| David J. Kalupahana | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sri Lanka |
| Fields | Philosophy, Buddhist Studies |
| Institutions | University of Hawaii |
| Alma mater | University of London |
| Doctoral advisor | K.N. Jayatilleke |
| Doctoral students | David E. Shaner |
David J Kalupahana is a Buddhist scholar from Sri Lanka. He was a student of the late K.N. Jayatilleke, who was a student of Wittgenstein. He wrote mainly about epistemology, theory of language, and compared later Buddhist philosophical texts against the earliest texts and tried to present interpretations that were both historically contextualised and also compatible with the earliest texts, and in doing so, he encouraged Theravadin Buddhists and scholars to reevaluate the legitimacy of later, Mahayana texts and consider them more sympathetically.
He obtained his BA (Sri Lanka, 1959), Ph.D (London), and D. Litt (Hon. Peradeniya, Sri Lanka). He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii. He was assistant lecturer in Pali and Buddhist Civilization at the University of Ceylon and studied Chinese and Tibetan at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London where he completed a Ph.D. dissertation on the problem of causality in the Pali Nikayas and the Chinese Agamas in 1966.
He left the University of Ceylon (1972) to join the University of Hawaii, serving as the Chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Chairman of the Graduate Field in Philosophy (1974-80). He has directed international intra-religious conferences on Buddhism, and on Buddhism and Peace.
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