Wilhelm Rau

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Wilhelm Rau (born February 15, 1922 in Gera ; † December 29, 1999 there ) was a German Indologist .

Life

Wilhelm Rau grew up in Gera and laid in 1940 at the local Rutheneum , where his father senior teacher was the High School from. He then began studying Indology (with Friedrich Weller ), Comparative Linguistics and Classical Philology at the University of Leipzig before he was drafted into military service. Towards the end of the Second World War he was temporarily employed as a Hindi interpreter for the Indian Legion .

In 1946 Rau resumed his studies at the University of Marburg , where he received his doctorate in Indology under Johannes Nobel in 1949 with a thesis on Vallabhadeva's commentary on Māghas Śiśupālavadha, and completed his habilitation in 1952 on State and Society in Ancient India . After a two-year study visit to Shantiniketan , India , he took on an extraordinary professorship for comparative Indo-European linguistics at the University of Frankfurt am Main in 1955 , before he succeeded Nobel as a full professor at the then Indian-East Asian seminar at the University of Marburg in 1958 . In 1987 he retired .

After the reunification of Germany , Rau took on another teaching position for Indology at the University of Leipzig in 1992/93 and moved from Marburg back to his hometown Gera, where he died at the end of 1999. Its extensive private specialist library was taken over by the University of Halle in 2001 .

From 1962 to 1996 Rau was co-editor of the trade journal Orientalische Literaturzeitung, which has been published since 1898 . Since 1979 he has been a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz .

research

The main subject of Rau's work is the classical Sanskrit poetry , especially the Vedas and their philological development; Based on his philological studies, he also presented various treatises on everyday cultural-historical aspects of the Vedic epoch. Rau's multi-volume critical edition of Bhartṛharis Vākyapadīya is particularly important in the field of linguistic theory and the philosophy of language in classical Sanskrit literature .

Rau also devoted himself to the history of his subject, Indology, and published a volume with portraits and short biographies of important German Indologists.

Fonts (selection)

Text editions on Bhartṛharis Vākyapadīya
  • The handwritten tradition of the Vākyapadīya and its commentaries. Fink, Munich 1971 (Treatises of the Marburg Learned Society, born in 1971, Volume 1).
  • Bhartṛharis Vākyapadīya. The mūlakārikās after the manuscripts ed. and provided with a pāda index. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1977 (Treatises for the Customer of the Orient, Volume 42, 4). ISBN 3-515-02403-4 .
  • (with Peri Sarveswara Sharma :) Vākyapadīyaprameyasamgraha. An anonymous scholion for the 2nd Kānḍạ of the Vākyapadīya. Edited from the only known manuscript. Fink, Munich 1981. ISBN 3-7705-1864-0 .
  • Bhartṛharis Vākyapadīya. Complete word index to the mūlakārikās. Steiner, Stuttgart 1988 (Academy of Sciences and Literature, treatises of the humanities and social sciences class, year 1988, volume 11). ISBN 3-515-05303-4 .
  • Bhartṛharis Vākyapadīya II: Text of the palm leaf manuscript Trivandrum SN 532 (= A) . Steiner, Stuttgart 1991 (Academy of Sciences and Literature, treatises of the humanities and social sciences class, year 1991, volume 7) ISBN 3-515-06001-4 .
Monographs
  • State and society in ancient India. Represented from the Brāhmaṇa texts. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1957.
  • Weaving and braiding in Vedic India. F. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1971 (Academy of Sciences and Literature, treatises of the humanities and social sciences class, year 1970, volume 11).
  • Pottery and Earthenware in Vedic India. F. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1972 (Academy of Sciences and Literature, Treatises of the Humanities and Social Sciences Class, 1972, Volume 10).
  • Metals and metal implements in Vedic India . F. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1974 (Academy of Sciences and Literature, Treatises of the Humanities and Social Sciences Class, 1973, Volume 8).
  • India's contribution to the culture of humanity. F. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1975 (meeting reports of the Scientific Society at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Volume 13.2).
  • On Vedic antiquity. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1983 (Academy of Sciences and Literature, Treatises of the Humanities and Social Sciences Class, 1983, Volume 1). ISBN 3-515-03901-5 .
Editorships

literature

  • Oskar von Hinüber: Obituary for Wilhelm Rau (1922–1999) . In: Yearbook of the Academy of Sciences and Literature. Volume 50/1999 year, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 138-141.
  • Claus Vogel :  Wilhelm Rau. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 193-195 ( digitized version ).
  • Michael Hahn : Wilhelm Rau (1922–1999). In: Journal of the German Oriental Society. Volume 153, 2003, pp. 1-9.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Branch library South Asia of the University and State Library Halle (Saale) on the website of the University of Halle with an entry on Wilhelm Rau (accessed on September 22, 2010)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rau, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Indologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Gera
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1999
Place of death Gera