This is very sad news indeed. Dipak Bhattacharya and his father Durgamohan Bhattacharya were pioneers in the discovery and editing of the Paippalāda Atharvaveda from Orissa. I met him several times at conferences, and he was very generous in answering my questions regarding the Atharvavedic tradition during my own editing of the Śaunakīya Caturādhyāyikā and the Vikr̥tis of the Śaunakīya Atharvaveda. He also made important contributions to Pāṇinian studies. His passing is a major loss to Vedic studies. ॐ शान्ति: शान्ति: शान्ति: ।

Madhav M. Deshpande

Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies

Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]

On Sat, Apr 22, 2023 at 4:07 AM Arlo Griffiths via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Prof. Dipak Bhattacharya

Prof. Dipak Bhattacharya, a renowned scholar of Sanskrit and Vedic Studies, passed away yesterday (April 21, 2023), at his daughter’s residence in Mumbai, due to prolonged illness and old age. He was eighty-two. He is survived by two daughters, son-in-laws and a granddaughter.

Prof. Bhattacharya worked at the Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan and devoted his life to teaching and research in the field of Sanskrit and Vedic Studies. He was known for his research in Vedic Studies, particularly, the first critical edition of the Paippalāda Saṃhitā of the Atharvaveda. He continued the work left incomplete by his father, Prof. Durgamohan Bhattacharya, who is credited with discovering the tradition of the Atharvaveda in Odisha. He collected several manuscripts of that Veda written in Oriya script, worked meticulously throughout his life and brought out a good critical edition of the entire Saṃhitā, consisting of twenty Kāṇḍas. The edition was published in four volumes by the Asiatic Society, Kolkata (1997-2016). This work evinces the mastery of Vedic and classical Sanskrit language, proficiency in textual criticism, colossal industry and insight on the part of that scholar. Despite the difference of opinion, the community of Vedic scholars will always remain indebted to Prof. Bhattacharya for his monumental work. Eminent Vedic philologists such as Prof. Michael Witzel (retired Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University) and Prof. Georges Pinault (Paris) have expressed their feelings similarly.

I had good personal relations with Prof. Bhattacharya. He participated in a national seminar on Vedic Śākhās I had organized in 2001 at the Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth (TMV) in honour of Prof. C. G. Kashikar. He also participated in the Fifth International Vedic Workshop held in Bucharest in 2011. He worked as an external examiner and attended the Viva Voce examination of Dr. Shilpa Sumant for her Ph. D. from TMV. He always treated me like his younger brother. His sad demise is an unrepairable loss for the field of Vedic Studies and a personal loss for me. 

My deep condolences to his family, students, friends and colleagues.

Shrikant Bahulkar

 

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