Dear colleagues,

As I only check in on Indology irregularly, I was shocked and saddened to learn of the departure of Johannes and Joy from this world. I had met Johannes numerous times at conferences and worked together with him in Lausanne 20 years back on the reading of MBh 12.211-12—we disagreed strongly about 211 and neither of us had a confident reading then of 212. As I continued with the translation, interpretation, and annotation of the Mokṣadharmaparvan, I was often addressing Johannes and numerous of his writings in my mind. His leaving creates a big “Johannes-shaped hole in the Universe,” and I do miss him. I will never again trade ideas with him while looking at his wryly smiling face and those twinkling eyes!

In a piece I wrote for his Festchrift  Devadattīyam, I likened his  sāmarthya, his lāghava, and his seeming ubiquity to Bhīṣma’s fighting from his chariot during the great war. The metaphor still seems fitting in retrospect:

In the Mahābhārata dexterous and skillful warriors sometimes move so quickly as they turn and shoot their bows that they appear to be facing several directions at once and shooting arrows in visibly continuous streams. Or they move so rapidly they appear to be many heroes fighting simultaneously. So Bhīṣma, on the third day of the war "showed how quick his hands were as he whirled upon the platform of his chariot, appearing there, and there! and there and there! as with the wheel of fire (alātacakravat)! Because he was so quick, the Pāṇḍavas and the Sṛñjayas saw in that single mighty hero many hundreds and thousands of warriors fighting in the battle. People there thought Bhīṣma’s body was something made by magic—they saw him east, west, north, and south!"

(MBh 6.55.21–24: sa nṛtyan vai rathopasthe darśayan pāṇilāghavam / alātacakravad rājaṃs tatra tatra sma dṛśyate // 21 // tam ekaṃ samare śūraṃ pāṇḍavāḥ sṛñjayās tathā / anekaśatasāhasraṃ samapaśyanta lāghavāt // 22 // māyākṛtātmānam iva bhīṣmaṃ tatra sma menire / pūrvasyāṃ diśi taṃ dṛṣṭvā pratīcyāṃ dadṛśur janāḥ // 23 // udīcyāṃ cainam ālokya dakṣiṇasyāṃ punaḥ prabho / evaṃ sa samare vīro gāṅgeyaḥ pratyadṛśyata //24.)

"And his bow formed a full-circle the whole time […] and he shot fire-tipped arrows that […] made continuous lines of arrows in every direction […]."

(MBh 6.55.19–20 tatra bhīṣmaḥ śāṃtanavo nityaṃ maṇḍalakārmukaḥ / mumoca bāṇān dīptāgrān ahīn āśīviṣān iva // 19 // śarair ekāyanīkurvan diśaḥ sarvā yatavrata / jaghāna pāṇḍavarathān ādiśyādiśya bhārata // 20.

Though he is a scholar rather than a warrior, the one and only Johannes Bronkhorst also whirls before the academic world as if he were many—thinking and writing with continuous streams of books and articles on numerous profound questions of philosophy and cultural history. And he too seems to be in many places at once: now he’s in Japan, now he’s in England, and in America, Korea, Spain, Germany, and India and, of course, Lausanne! And like Bhīṣma, as that one lay on his bed of arrows after the war, instructing Yudhiṣṭhira in the most important forms of knowledge, Johannes Bronkhorst too is one of the most learned, insightful, and piquant Indological scholars of our era. Like Yudhiṣṭhira from Bhīṣma, we have all learned more from Johannes Bronkhorst than we can take in at once. As this small essay on the dazzling wheel of fire will show, the heat and brilliance of the fire that is its source is ultimately more salient than the apparent simultaneity of the wheel – and that is something that holds true with Johannes as well. 

From: “Philosophy’s ‘Wheel of Fire’ (alātacakra) and Its Epic Background,” in Devadattīyam, 773-74.

In great sadness, Jim Fitzgerald