Professor Osmund Bopearachchi, Corresponding Member of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, is the Emeritus Director of Research of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS-ENS), Paris. He is a numismatist, art historian, and archaeologist, and former Visiting Professor and Member of the Doctoral School of the Paris-Sorbonne University, Paris.
Prof. Bopearachchi holds a B.A. from the University of Kelaniya (Sri Lanka), and a B.A. honours, M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from the Paris 1 Sorbonne University, and a Higher Doctorate (Habilitation) from the Paris 4 Sorbonne University. After obtaining his doctorate from the University of Paris I - Sorbonne in June 17 1987, Bopearachchi initiated a comprehensive survey of pre-Sasanian coins held in museums worldwide. In the early 1990s, he began documenting and publishing the coins, thousands of which, along with hundreds of manuscripts, were then flooding the bazaars of Pakistan from war-ravaged Afghanistan. As he attempted to link numismatics with sculptural and pictorial iconography he developed a deep interest in the study of the art and archaeology of ancient India. This has led to his many publications and activities in the field.
More recently, his books on Gandhāran art, based on unpublished or partially published sculptures and objects from Gandhāra and Greater Gandhāra, draw on research carried out in museums in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Japan, Europe, Canada, and the United States, as well as fieldwork at ancient sites in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. These projects were made possible owing to the generous support of the Trung Lam Research Fund for Central Asian Art and Archaeology, the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where Bopearachchi is former Adjunct Professor of Central and South Asian Art, Archaeology, and Numismatics, and former Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies.
