Dušan Zbavitel
Dušan Zbavitel (born May 7, 1925 in Košice ; † August 7, 2012 in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak Indologist and translator from English , Bengali , Sanskrit and Pali .
Life
Zbavitel was born in the east of the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia. He studied Indology from 1945 to 1948 with Vincenc Lesný at the Charles University in Prague and graduated with a doctorate. In 1950 he began teaching the Bengali language at the university. From 1954 he worked as a research assistant in the South Asia department of the Prague Institute for Oriental Studies and became its director in 1960. After he had to leave university in 1971 because of political differences over the Prague Spring of 1968, he worked as a freelance translator until 1978. The Bengali authors translated into Czech by Zbavitel include Rabindranath Thakur - on whose poetry he was a recognized expert - also Manik Bandyopadhyay , Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Sukanta Bhattacharya . He wrote the first Czech textbooks of Bengali (German 1970) and a Sanskrit textbook (2006) as well as the first complete translation of the Upanishads directly from Sanskrit into Czech.
From 1978 until his retirement in 1985 he taught Bengali and Sanskrit at the language school in Prague, and from 1990 he again gave lectures on Hinduism , Sanskrit and Bengali literature at Charles University.
Zbavitel was considered the doyen of Bengali research in the western world. In 2006 he was awarded the Indian State Order Padma Bhushan for his lifelong contribution to teaching Indian languages and literature .
Web links
- Zbavitel Dušan (Czech.)
- ZBAVITEL Dušan - český indolog (czech.)
- Indologist Dušan Zbavitel dies ( Memento from February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Světová náboženství Hinduism Dušan Zbavitel
- Dušan Zbavitel: A History of Indian Literature , Volume IX, Bengali Literature, limited preview in the Google book search
Individual evidence
- ^ Rabindranath Tagore: an Indian poet who inspired a Czech generation
- ^ So William Radice in Bengal Studies Special Issue, Dedicated to Dusan Zbavitel to His 75th Birthday Archiv Orientalni, Volume 68, No. 3 (2000), pp. 327-536 , ISSN 0044-8699
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Zbavitel, Dušan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Czechoslovak Indologist and translator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 7, 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Košice |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 7, 2012 |
| Place of death | Prague |