[INDOLOGY] Alf Hiltebeitel 1942-2023

Tue Mar 14 15:41:04 UTC 2023

I am so sorry to read this and my thoughts go to his family and close friends.
I will always remember getting an unsolicited and very encouraging email from him shortly after my MA thesis was published (in 2001, I think); my wife was working on my computer and came running down the stairs saying, ‘Alf Hitebeitel has emailed you! Alf Hiltebeitel has emailed you!’ Such was his profile in our household that my wife, not an Indologist, was as excited as I was. It is a mark of the sort of scholar he was that he was reaching out to Mahā-minnows like me and encouraging and supporting them. I will miss his low-key presentation style and the range, depth and innovative character of his scholarship, as I am sure we all will.

James Hegarty

> On 14 Mar 2023, at 15:27, McGrath, Kevin <kmcgrath at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> 
> Yes, he was a fine scholar who not only filmy established the field of Mahabharata Studies but then, continued to change the paradigms and methodology of that field for decades. We are all grateful to him ...
> 
>     Kevin McGrath.
> From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of Adam Bowles via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2023 11:02 AM
> To: Collins, Brian <collinb1 at ohio.edu>
> Cc: Indology <indology at list.indology.info>
> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Alf Hiltebeitel 1942-2023
>  
> Dear Brian,
> 
> Many thanks for these words. Alf will remain an enormous presence for so many of us. I have fond memories of the first time I met him, somewhat in awe, at the 2007 DICSEP conference, and then on a number of times afterwards. He was always generous with his time and conversation and always striving to understand the great epic better. He will be missed and warmly remembered. 
> 
> All the best,
> Adam
> 
> 
> Associate Professor Adam Bowles
> Convenor, Studies in Religion
>  
> Deputy Head of School
> School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry
> Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
> The University of Queensland
> a.bowles1 at uq.edu.au <mailto:a.bowles1 at uq.edu.au>
>  
> President, South Asian Studies Association of Australia
> Associate Editor, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
> 
> 
>> On 15 Mar 2023, at 12:40 am, Collins, Brian via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Colleagues,
>> 
>> I am sorry to report that Alf Hiltebeitel passed away in the Republic of Colombia a few days ago. It doesn’t need saying, but he was a giant in the field and made important contributions as a historian of religions, an ethnographer, a philologist, and a scholar of intellectual history. He even continued producing scholarship well after his advanced Parkinson’s made it impossible to speak and very difficult to write. 
>> 
>> He was most well known for his work on the Mahābhārata epic. And over the course of his life, he practically produced an epic of his own.
>> 
>> His first book, The Ritual of Battle (Cornell 1976), and his two most recent books, Nonviolence in the Mahābhārata (Routledge 2016) and World of Wonders (Oxford 2021) add up to about 800 pages combined. The two volumes of The Cult of Draupadī, Vol. 1, Mythologies: From Gingee to Kurukṣetra (Chicago 1988) and Vol. 2, On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess (Chicago 1991), are another 1000 pages or so. 
>> 
>> The two “rethinking” books, Rethinking India’s Oral and Classical Epics: Draupadī among Rajputs, Muslims, and Dalits (Chicago 1999) and Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader’s Guide to the Education of the Dharma King (Chicago 2001), are about another 900 pages. 
>> 
>> Reading the Fifth Veda: Studies on the Mahābhārata and When the Goddess Was a Woman: Mahābhārata Ethnographies (Brill 2011), are about 1200 pages altogether. Dharma: Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative (Oxford 2011) is about 700 pages. The two Freud books, Freud’s India and Freud’s Mahābhārata (Oxford 2018), are 600 combined pages. 
>> 
>> We get an estimated total of 5,200 pages (roughly the same size as Bibek Debroy’s ten-volume English translation of the Mahābhārata) if we stop this partial bibliography there. But Alf did not stop there, and was working on a book about Vyāsa as late as last year.
>> 
>> There won’t be another like Alf. He will be sorely missed by his students and his colleagues, but will never be forgotten as long as English readers still want to grapple with the immensity of India’s Great Epic. 
>> 
>> With condolences to his friends and family especially,
>> 
>> Brian
>> 
>> Assoc. Prof. Brian Collins
>> (He/Him/His)
>> Department Chair and Drs. Ram and Sushila Gawande Chair in Indian Religion and Philosophy
>> Department of Classics and Religious Studies
>> 234 Ellis Hall
>> Ohio University
>> Athens, Ohio
>> 740-597-2103 (office)
>> 
>> 
>> 
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