[INDOLOGY] François Gros (1933-2021)

[Eli Franco]

Dear Srilata,
This sad news indeed. We used to be close when I lived in Pondicherry  
in 1979 and I greatly admired his sharp intellect, broad horizons, and  
not the least his witty, ironical remarks. One that stuck, and by  
which, I think, he would like to be remembered is: “Les élèves de  
monsieur Filliozat sont des autodidactes.” (He meant Jean, of course.)
Best wishes,
Eli




Zitat von Srilata Raman via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> It is with deep sadness that I wish to share with you the news of  
> the passing of Professor François Gros in Lyons, France at the age  
> of 88.
> François Édouard Stéphane Gros was a child of a France still  
> actively connected to the Second World War. He was born and grew up  
> and lived his last years in Lyons, France in a street named after  
> his namesake, his grandfather François Gros, a Latin scholar. Having  
> received a classical French education, he studied pre-history under  
> André Leroi-Gourhan and  learned anthropology from Louis Dumont and  
> sociology and economic history from Daniel Thorner. Senior to him at  
> the Fondation Thiers, Paris was Michel Foucault. He began his  
> working life as a French Teacher in Algeria and his deep and abiding  
> interest in Tamil Studies began with his frequent visits to  
> Pondicherry from 1963 onwards, to study the Tamil language and  
> literature. He founded a number of important research programmes at  
> The French Institute, Pondicherry including the project that  
> resulted in the Historical Atlas of South India, working actively  
> and collaboratively with many generations of Indian scholars. He was  
> an important  consultant on the translation and lexicographical  
> projects of the Chennai based Cre-A publishers. François Gros was  
> unusual in Tamil Studies for his vast erudition, not just of  
> premodern Tamil literature but also of the contemporary literary  
> landscape, seeing the entire Tamil literature through a capacious  
> vision of what linked the old and the new. He was also an  
> extraordinary and discerning collector of Tamil printed materials –  
> assembling a unique, and now extremely rare and valuable private  
> collection of Tamil books,  and also works on European studies of  
> South India beginning from the 17th century. Starting in 2018 he  
> collaborated actively with Srilata Raman at Toronto and M. Kannan of  
> the French Institute, Pondicherry in donating the core of  
> approximately 10,000 books of this invaluable resource for Tamil  
> Studies to the University of Toronto where it is currently housed   
> and in the process of being catalogued. The rare works of the Gros  
> Collection of the University of Toronto Libraries will be made  
> available to scholars through free digital access once the pandemic  
> is over and the work can be completed. Those of us in Tamil Studies  
> today remember and mourn the passing of a scholar of breadth and  
> vision in the field and we who knew him personally also a delightful  
> and deeply lovable human being.
>
> with warm regards,
> Srilata Raman,
> Associate Professor of Hinduism,
> University of Toronto.


-- 
Prof. Dr. Eli Franco
Institut für Indologie und Zentralasienwissenschaften
Schillerstr. 6
04109 Leipzig

Ph. +49 341 9737 121, 9737 120 (dept. office)
Fax +49 341 9737 148