[INDOLOGY] [External] Re: George Thompson (1951-2025)

Tue Jul 7 20:42:32 UTC 2026

Dear colleagues,

I agree with Antonia Ruppel that these remembrances--not condolences--are
valuable and welcome. And thank you to Fred Smith and Caley Smith for their
remarks. I did not know George well, but in my encounters with him he was
exactly as Fred described him in his last sentence. And I always profited
from reading his written arguments carefully. He was a valuable member of
the Indological community at large; I am sorry to hear of the difficulties
of his last years.

In sadness, Jim Fitzgerald

On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 1:33 AM Caley Smith via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I only met George in person a few times, but we had a correspondence
> over that begin in 2013, and I learned a tremendous amount from his
> work and his emails. His essays on the Vedas remain some of the most
> insightful and, I think, important work on the Vedas in the 21st
> century. I would like to list a few of my favorite pieces of his as
> much of my dissertation work was based on not only his analyses but
> the method he developed for studying poetic impersonation in RV.
>
> 1995. “The Pursuit of Hidden Tracks in Vedic.” Indo-Iranian Journal 38: 1-
> 30.
> (a crucial piece for thinking about the symbolic value of the
> footprint in Rigveda in ways that I think survive in early Buddhist
> imagery)
>
> 1997a. “Ahaṃkāra and Ātmastuti: Self-Assertion and Impersonation in
> the R̥gveda.” History of Religions 37:2:141-71.
> (George observed that overt impersonation hymns where characterized by
> a kind of stylistic grammar of self-assertion that fronted 1st person
> pronouns and verb forms, I basically took George's method wholecloth
> and then thought "what other ways could the grammar be used for
> self-assertion?" and landed on stylized use of proximal deixis)
>
> 1997b. “The Brahmodya and Vedic Discourse.” Journal of the American
> Oriental Society 117:1:13-37.
> (George observed Brahmodyas or "vedic riddles" where often marked by
> certain particles (like svid) and syntax that let the hearer know this
> was a brahmodya)
>
> 1998. “On Truth-Acts in Vedic”. Indo-Iranian Journal 41:125–53.
> (on the Vedic satyakriya as a truth-act, deeply influenced by own
> thinking about the contents of Vedic samhitas as performative
> speech-acts first and foremost)
>
> 2003  “Soma and Ecstasy in the R̥gveda.” Electronic Journal of Vedic
> Studies 9:1.
> (the name buries the lede, but this is about the possibility of
> bitextual impersonation in the hymn of the lapwing)
>
> I am happy to share send these pieces to anyone who would like to read
> them and does not have access. If I can be candid, I sometimes feel
> that in some circles creativity is often seen a self-indulgence that
> gets in the way of "just the facts" philology, but George's work
> showed me it's as vital as breath.
>
> Best,
> Caley
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 5, 2026 at 11:24 PM Smith, Frederick M via INDOLOGY
> <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks you for this. I knew George well, and was alerted to his passing
> by Tim Cahill in August of last year. I intended to write an obit on him,
> but that escaped me. George was a dedicated and learned Indo-Iranian
> philologist. He studied at Berkeley under Martin Schwartz and the
> Indianists there in the 1980s. George published a number of high level
> essays on the ṚV in the JAOS, IIJ, and elsewhere. He taught at an art
> college in New Hampshire until his wife Susan was diagnosed with terminal
> cancer about ten years ago. He then was forced to leave his position to
> look after her. George suffered a stroke several years ago and moved to an
> assisted living home in upstate New York, to be near one of his two sons
> and his family. In spite of his incapacity, George read passages from the
> ṚV, Avesta, and associated scholarship, and thought about them nearly every
> day. George was clear thinking, articulate, and the embodiment of
> sincerity, virtue, and morality that inspired all who knew him.
> >
> > Warm regards,
> > Fred Smith
> >
> > Get Outlook for Mac
> > From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of
> Nicole Karapanagiotis via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
> > Date: Sunday, July 5, 2026 at 6:10 PM
> > To: Antonia Ruppel <rhododaktylos at gmail.com>
> > Cc: indology at list.indology.info <indology at list.indology.info>
> > Subject: [External] Re: [INDOLOGY] George Thompson (1951-2025)
> >
> > Antonia, Heiner, and all,
> > I also appreciate the chance to learn more about the deceased and read
> tributes about them.
> > Thank you,
> > Nicole Karapanagiotis
> >
> > Dr. Nicole Karapanagiotis, Ph.D. (she/her)
> > Associate Professor, Dept. of Philosophy & Religion
> > Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
> > Camden College of Arts and Sciences
> > 429 Cooper St., Room #303
> > Camden, NJ 08102
> > nicole.karapanagiotis at rutgers.edu
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 5, 2026 at 6:04 PM Antonia Ruppel via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Heiner,
> >
> > I respectfully disagree. I always appreciate the chance to hear from
> anyone who knew the deceased better. They were a member of our community,
> and while sharing our memories of them will perhaps not make their śravaḥ
> akṣitam, it still seems the right thing to do. I met George at the World
> Sanskrit Conference in Kyoto, and still remember how friendly he was to me,
> even though back then I still was very new to the field.
> >
> > If you feel there are too many emails on this list, perhaps consider
> signing up for the daily digest rather than the individual emails?
> >
> > All my best,
> >     Antonia
> >
> > On Sun, 5 Jul 2026 at 23:54, Rolf Heinrich Koch via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> >
> > Dear listmembers,
> >
> > Just a small suggestion: to help reduce unnecessary email traffic (and
> save a little energy), it might be nice if condolences in response to
> obituary notices were sent directly to the original sender rather than to
> the entire mailing list.
> >
> > Thank you for considering this.
> >
> > Heiner
> >
> > Am 05.07.2026 um 19:30 schrieb Whitaker, Jarrod via INDOLOGY:
> >
> > Dear Colleagues
> >
> > A colleague just let me know that George Thompson passed away last year.
> I'm not sure if this was broadcast last year, so my apologies if so. George
> was a long-time member of the AOS and a Vedic and Classical Sanskrit
> scholar.
> >
> >
> https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/ledgertranscript/name/george-thompson-obituary?id=59310306
> >
> > JW
> >
> > --
> > Dr. R. H. Koch - Germany/Sri Lanka
> > www.rolfheinrichkoch.wordpress.com/
> > www.ummaggajataka.wordpress.com
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > INDOLOGY mailing list
> > INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> > https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > INDOLOGY mailing list
> > INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> > https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > INDOLOGY mailing list
> > INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> > https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20260707/d0d0a435/attachment.htm>