This morning I woke up to the shock of the passing of Professor Johannes Bronkhorst. A towering figure in our field whose erudition was matched only by his sharp wit and humor.
I had the privilege to study under Johannes in Lausanne, where he taught me Sanskrit and Indology. His classes were never dull—always infused with the excitement of his ongoing research, his relentless curiosity, and his insistence that no academic or religious tradition should ever be taken for granted. As a teacher, he was tough, especially when it came to Sanskrit, but also profoundly generous. I was not especially close to him, perhaps because I admired him too much, and because I was never quite the Sanskritist he might have hoped for in a student. But he taught me more than language—he taught me to think critically and carefully, to question even the foundations of tradition, and to take ideas seriously.
After my studies in Lausanne, I went on to pursue my PhD in Heidelberg. Though my topic—living Vedic traditions—was quite distant from his own historical and philological training, he was fascinated by it. And though ethnography and the contemporary were not really his cup of tea, he let me go my way with curiosity. I still remember how happy he was when I got my PhD. It felt like a turning point in our relationship. We always talked at conferences and were genuinely happy to see each other. I had even been thinking of finding a way to get him to Vienna this fall—something I now regret deeply. I wish I had reached out sooner.
Johannes leaves behind a prolific and provocative body of work, spanning Vyākaraṇa, Vedic and Buddhist studies, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, Sāṅkhya, Vedānta, Jainism, and Ājīvikism. He never saw his life as important outside of his scholarship, but through that scholarship—and the uncompromising integrity with which he pursued it—he offered us a vision of intellectual rigor and personal courage that is deeply inspiring.
Today, we mourn a teacher, a scholar, and a friend. But more than that, we celebrate a life lived with deep thought, with honesty, and with joy. Johannes has left us with his work—work that continues to teach, provoke, and illuminate. And he has left us with the memory of a master who, even in his final moments, was curious, generous, and fully alive.
Thank you also Vincent for sharing so vividly about your last encounter with him, it was very moving.
May he be remembered with love and respect.
Borayin Larios
Dear Indology-janāḥ,
I met Johannes in 1973 in Pune. I was just beginning my MA in Sanskrit at the Centre for Advanced Study in Sanskrit (CASS) at (then) Poona University. I believe he was finishing up that year, after migrating to Pune from Jaipur a couple of years earlier to study vyākaraṇa, as was most fitting for Pune. I was much closer to a beginner than I should have been at the time, and quite out of my element in the MA classes on the Siddhāntakaumudī taught by SD Joshi (a required course in the curriculum), in which Johannes excelled. Dr. Joshi paced rapidly and non-stop from one end of the room to the other, like a caged animal, for the entire hour of every class, never referring to a book or a text; such was his extraordinary pāṇḍitya and energy. The only time he would stop would be to ask, usually once or twice in every class, “Bronkhorst, what question do you have?” Johannes would almost always have a question, usually quite a penetrating one, to the delight of Dr. Joshi, who would then divert his lecture to answer it fully. Clearly, Dr. Joshi saw that Johannes was a challenging student with a bright future.
Like Robert Z, Johannes sent me packets of publications every year until that was superseded by the ease of sending electronic copies, which followed until just a few years ago. The fact that Johannes had initially studied mathematics was, I understood at the time, a close predecessor to his expertise in Sanskrit, in vyākaraṇa, in śāstra. When I was in Pune last November, someone informed me that he was “keeping indifferent health.” He was a highly valued friend and colleague. We were fortunate to have him in our midst for more than half a century.
Kind regards
Fred Smith
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