LAMOTTE, ÉTIENNE (1903–1983), Belgian specialist in Indian Buddhist doctrine and history. A Roman Catholic priest, Lamotte was a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain. His two most significant achievements in the field of Buddhist studies were his Histoire du bouddhisme indien des origines à l'ère Śaka (1958), the most elaborate work thus far on the history of early Buddhism, and his Le traité de la grande vertu de sagesse (1944–1980), an annotated translation of a large portion of the Ta chih tu lun (Skt., *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa), which is an encyclopedic treatise on Mahāyāna Buddhism attributed to Nāgārjuna and translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva.

His ten years of collaborative work with Louis de La Vallée Poussin (1869–1938) were more decisive in the formation of Lamotte's thought than were his short periods of study in Rome (1926–1927) and...