Xu Fancheng

Xu Fancheng (Chinese: 徐梵澄),Courtesy name Jihai(Chinese: 季海) (26 October 1909,Changsha - 6 March 2000,Beijing), also known as Hu Hsu in India, was a Chinese scholar and translator,indologist and philosopher. He translated 50 of the Upanishads into classical Chinese. He also translated Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra, Kalidasa's lyric poem Meghaduuta (Cloud Messenger), and several of Sri Aurobindo's works into Chinese. He was familiar with Greek, Latin, English, French, as well as Sanskrit and German. A 16-volume of his complete works was published in 2006.

He was born into a wealthy family in Changsha, Hunan. His name was "Hu"(琥) by birth. Fancheng is his Pen name. The childhood of Xu was marked by a complete study of Classical Chinese. He was taught by the student of the late Qing dynasty Confucian scholar Wang Kaiyun. He was a friend and student of Lu Xun in his early life. From 1927 to 1929, he studied History at Zhongshan University and then Western Literature in Fudan University. He studied Fine Art and Philosophy at the University of Königsberg, Germany from 1929 to 1932. From 1945 to 1978, he studied and taught in India, thus escaping the Cultural Revolution. He lived in Pondicherry from 1951 to 1978 in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (where he was an inmate). After returning to China, he worked as a researcher in the Research Institute of World Religions of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.He translated prolifically. Various Sanskrit classics were introduced by Xu.

Xu was an acquaintance of Lu Xun. His study in Königsberg was at first inspired by Lu's advice. Throughout his entire life, his academic achievement and his fame were not proportionate. Partly due to the fact that Xu did not have any student to succeed his study.Xu possesses the ability to translate Sanskrit texts into Classical Chinese while both languages are archaic and not commonly spoken by people in India and China.