Alf Hiltebeitel no more

[K S Kannan]

Alfred John Hiltebeitel (born 1942).

He died on March 12, 2023.

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Dr. K.S.Kannan  D.Litt.

Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj Chair Professor, IIT-Madras.

Member, Advisory Board, "Prof. A K Singh AURO Chair of Indic Studies", AURO University, Surat.
Member, Expert Committee for Review of Criticism of Indian Knowledge Traditions, Central Sanskrit University (under MoE, GoI), Ganganath Jha Campus, Prayagraj.
Adjunct Faculty, Dept of Heritage Science and Technology, IIT Hyderabad.

Nominated Member, Academic Committee, Kavi Kula Guru Kalidasa University, Ramtek.
Member, Academic Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthana.
Academic Director, Swadeshi Indology.
Nominated Member, IIAS, Shimla.

Former Professor, CAHC, Jain University, Bangalore.

Former Director, Karnataka Samskrit University, Bangalore.

Former Head, Dept. of Sanskrit, The National Colleges, Bangalore.

https://sites.google.com/view/kskannan

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Yes, Prof. Kannan, 

The following was shared on Indology list:

Dear Colleagues,

I am sorry to report that Alf Hiltebeitel passed away in the Republic of Colombia a few days ago. It doesn’t need saying, but he was a giant in the field and made important contributions as a historian of religions, an ethnographer, a philologist, and a scholar of intellectual history. He even continued producing scholarship well after his advanced Parkinson’s made it impossible to speak and very difficult to write. 

He was most well known for his work on the Mahābhārata epic. And over the course of his life, he practically produced an epic of his own.

His first book, The Ritual of Battle (Cornell 1976), and his two most recent books, Nonviolence in the Mahābhārata (Routledge 2016) and World of Wonders (Oxford 2021) add up to about 800 pages combined. The two volumes of The Cult of Draupadī, Vol. 1, Mythologies: From Gingee to Kurukṣetra (Chicago 1988) and Vol. 2, On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess (Chicago 1991), are another 1000 pages or so. 

The two “rethinking” books, Rethinking India’s Oral and Classical Epics: Draupadī among Rajputs, Muslims, and Dalits (Chicago 1999) and Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader’s Guide to the Education of the Dharma King (Chicago 2001), are about another 900 pages. 

Reading the Fifth Veda: Studies on the Mahābhārata and When the Goddess Was a Woman: Mahābhārata Ethnographies (Brill 2011), are about 1200 pages altogether. Dharma: Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative (Oxford 2011) is about 700 pages. The two Freud books, Freud’s India and Freud’s Mahābhārata (Oxford 2018), are 600 combined pages. 

We get an estimated total of 5,200 pages (roughly the same size as Bibek Debroy’s ten-volume English translation of the Mahābhārata) if we stop this partial bibliography there. But Alf did not stop there, and was working on a book about Vyāsa as late as last year.

There won’t be another like Alf. He will be sorely missed by his students and his colleagues, but will never be forgotten as long as English readers still want to grapple with the immensity of India’s Great Epic. 

With condolences to his friends and family especially,

Brian

Assoc. Prof. Brian Collins

(He/Him/His)
Department Chair and Drs. Ram and Sushila Gawande Chair in Indian Religion and Philosophy
Department of Classics and Religious Studies
234 Ellis Hall
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio

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Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Senior Director, IndicA

BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS Kavikulaguru Kalidasa Sanskrit University, Ramtek, Maharashtra

BoS Veda Vijnana Gurukula, Bengaluru.

Member, Advisory Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthanam, Bengaluru

BoS Rashtram School of Public Leadership

Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Studies in Public Leadership

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies, 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education, 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

 

 

[Nagaraj Paturi]

I met him in 1994 during an international conference on Folk Narratives at CIIL, Mysore. 

We continued to interact later. 

He acknowledged my sharing of my knowledge of the Babhruvahana and other Mahabharata related stories as available in south Indian particularly Telugu folklore, with him, in his books. 

His work on what he called " the Cult of Draupadi" was parallel to my work on the same cult in the Chittor district of Andhra Pradesh, particularly for a DoorDarshan documentation. His work on the Aravan cult of TamilNadu, that included work on religious transgenders had commonality with my work on religious transgenders dedicated to Yellamma in AP, Telangana , Karnataka and Maharashtra. His was a kind of diffusionist, Historical Geographical method in dealing with the Mahabharata narratives that he collected.  He used to be a very cordial person to talk.

Sadgatipraaptirastu to him.