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@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@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@list.indology.info> on behalf of Nicole Karapanagiotis via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
> Date: Sunday, July 5, 2026 at 6:10 PM
> To: Antonia Ruppel <rhododaktylos@gmail.com>
> Cc: indology@list.indology.info <indology@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@rutgers.edu
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 5, 2026 at 6:04 PM Antonia Ruppel via INDOLOGY <indology@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@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
>
>
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