Oldal 411 [411]
CZECHOSLOVAK ACADEMIC STUDY OF BUDDHISM IN THE 1950s AND 1960s: FIELD RESEARCH IN ASIA
Prague Charles University, Faculty of Arts much later, in 1976, thanks to the initiative
of Jaroslav Vacek,'° a later Dean of the faculty after the Velvet Revolution.
Lumir Jisl!' was born on April 18, 1921 in Ujezd u Svijan (today known as Svijan¬
sky Ujezd), in the region of Liberec. Already at the age of 15 he succeeded in making
an archaeological discovery, the value of which is expressed by the fact that the cave
where he made the discovery bears his name. His youthful passion for science was al¬
ready intensely evident during his years at the grammar school in Turnov (1932-1940).
He experienced the ‘exams’ of adulthood during the war in 1940: the Nazi occupation
of Czechoslovakia (the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) made
the subsequent pursuit of higher education impossible for him, as the Nazi occupying
powers had definitively closed all Czech language universities in 1939. During the war
years he worked as an insurance clerk in Liberec and as a young man he was active
in the Resistance: he was interrogated by the Gestapo twice. His dream of completing
his university education was realized after the war, when in the fall of 1945 he began
studying his beloved archaeology at Charles University in Prague. He was the student
of Jan Filip, with whom he was later to collaborate professionally. At the same time,
he attended lectures and studied at the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the Seminar for
the Comparative Study of Religions; this was a discipline which — with the excep¬
tion of the confessional universities — was not granted permission to give lectures or
develop academically in all of Czechoslovakia from the beginning of the 1950s right
up until 1989.12
The fact that he had studied comparative religion had a significant influence on his
professional activities after successfully graduating. The lectures of professors Otakar
Pertold and Vincent Lesny undoubtedly created a truly solid foundation of knowledge,
which Jisl himself later supplemented with a systematic study of the pertinent scientific
literature. He certainly was able to put his knowledge to good use a few years after
completing his studies, when he worked with the Asian collections at the Silesian
Museum in Opava.
More detail in Grollova, Ivana: The Past and Future of Mongolian Studies in Czechoslovakia. Archiv
orientálni Vol. 60 (1992), p. 289.
About his life and work see also KapiSovská, Veronika: The Mongolian Photographs of Lumír Jisl.
In: 108 Images of Mongolia: The Photographs of Czechoslovak Archaeologist Lumir Jisl 1957-1963.
Admon, Ulaanbaatar 2014, pp. 15—16; KapiSovska, Veronika: Ulaanbaatar in the Photographs of Lumir
Jisl. In: Ulaanbaatar 1957-1963: Testimony of Lumir Jis!. Admon, Ulaanbaatar 2015, pp. 34-37; Bélka,
Lubos: The Life and Work of Lumir Jisl. In: 108 Images of Mongolia: The Photographs of Czechoslovak
Archaeologist Lumir Jisl 1957-1963. Admon, Ulaanbaatar 2014, pp. 9-13; Bélka, LuboS: ‘Mongolia at
last! I’m at the Threshold of the Great Goal of my Life’: Lumir Jisl and Ulaanbaatar in the Summer of
1957. In: Ulaanbaatar 1957-1963: Testimony of Lumir Jis!. Admon, Ulaanbaatar 2015, pp. 23-29.
For more on the topic of religion studies at Charles University in Prague, see Bubik, Tomas: Ceské badani
o nabozenstvi ve 20. stoleti: Moznosti a meze [The Czech Research about religions in 20" century: The
possibilities and constraints]. Pavel Mervart, Cerveny Kostelec 2010, pp. 86-87.
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