Background
GONDA, January was born on April 14, 1905 in Gouda. Son of January Gonda and Martha.1.
philologist university professor
GONDA, January was born on April 14, 1905 in Gouda. Son of January Gonda and Martha.1.
He studied with Willem Caland at Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht (since 1990 Universiteit Utrecht) and from 1932 held positions at Utrecht and Leiden.
He held the positions of Chair of Sanskrit succeeding Caland from 1929, as well as of Indology from 1932. He published scholarly articles on Indian Sanskrit and Indonesian Javanese texts for sixty years. In 1952, he published his monumental work on Sanskrit in Indonesia.
His contributions to philology and Vedic literature has been oft cited.
He wrote with ease and elegance in Dutch, English and German, and had a breath-taking range of interests from the ancient literature of Indonesia and India to comparative religion and philology. Like many Orientalist of 20th century, Gonda never visited Asia.
However, his lack of field experience was more than compensated for by his encyclopedic knowledge of Indic literature and his profound empathy for the religious culture of Asia. Among his many students was J. A. B. van Buitenen who moved to the University of Chicago in 1961, and Henk Bodewitz succeeded Gonda to the chair of Sanskrit at Utrecht in 1976.
The foundation offers publication subsidies and grants to projects relating to Indology, the size of the grants and scope of activities being determined by the return on invested capital.
The Gonda Lectures and Gonda Indological Series are also named in his honour.
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Married Henriette Wijnholt in 1962.