[INDOLOGY] J.A.F. Roodbergen 19 October 1925 - 12 January 2017

[Jan E.M. Houben]

Dear List members,

I regret to inform you that on 12 January 2017 Dr. J.A.F. Roodbergen passed
away after a brief illness in a care home to which he had recently shifted.
His funeral (cremation) took place yesterday in pure silence, without any
public.

To his bibliography – http://dutchstudies-satsea.nl/
auteur/123/JoutheAnthonFokko-Roodbergen.html – should be added his obituary
of Dr. S.D. Joshi (1926-2013): “In memoriam Dr. Shivram Dattatreya Joshi
(1926-2013)” by J.A.F. Roodbergen, pp. 5-7, with supplementary
bibliographical note by J.E.M. Houben, pp. 7-12. Bulletin d’Etudes
Indiennes 31 (2013): 5-12.

A brief introduction to his approach to the Pāṇinian grammatical tradition
– and to the approach of S.D. Joshi, in the words of Roodbergen "il maestro
di color che sanno" – is found in the article “Time for a little something”
in Pāṇinian studies: Prof. S.D. Joshi felicitation volume (ed. by Madhav M.
Deshpande and S. Bhate), Ann Arbor, Michigan (Michigan Papers on South and
Southeast Asia 37), pp. 293-321.

His Dictionary of Pāṇinian grammatical terminology appeared in 2008 at the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune (with “Supplement to
Dictionary of Pāṇinian grammatical terminology”, 2011 in ABORI 90 [2011]:
127-151).
Dr. Roodbergen came to India in the early 1960s, originally in order to
work on a thesis on Bhāravi’s Kirāṭārjunīya and its commentary by Mallinātha,
in the line of Prof. A.A.M. Scharpé, his guide at Amsterdam University.
Seeing, however, that it makes little sense to study a learned commentary
like that of Mallinātha without a thorough mastery of the Sanskrit
grammatical tradition, he decided first to work on a thesis on Pāṇini’s
grammar for a doctoral degree at Pune university under the guidance of
Prof. S.D. Joshi (obtained in 1971).

His second doctoral degree he obtained in 1981 at Amsterdam University
(guide Prof. A.A.M. Scharpé) on the basis of an analysis and translation of
six chapters of Mallinātha’s commentary on the Kirāṭārjunīya, later on
published with E.J. Brill, Leiden (1984).

Translations of other chapters have been published in the Annals of the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, some chapters are still to
appear in the same Journal.

In 1995, he published an Introduction to Pāṇini and an Elementary Grammar
of Sanskrit (both in Dutch) at the India Institute, Amsterdam.

In 2010 Dr. Roodbergen donated his large library to the Oxford Centre for
Hindu Studies:

http://www.ochs.org.uk/news/ochs-library-receives-large-donation-titles

“While living in India, Prof. Roodbergen collected many rare and valuable
Sanskrit texts, which are now nearly impossible to obtain. His library
contains many Sanskrit texts that have only been published once and have
never been studied by Western scholars.”



Farewell to a great scholar, former associate professor (docent) at
Amsterdam University, co-founder of the still thriving India Institute,
Amsterdam, always a very serious and conscientious scholar and researcher
of India's intellectual heritage.





*Jan E.M. HOUBEN*

Directeur d’Études

Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite

*École Pratique des Hautes Études*

*Sciences historiques et philologiques *

54, rue Saint-Jacques

CS 20525 – 75005 Paris

johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr

https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

www.ephe.fr


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20170119/11240af0/attachment.htm>