Prof. Dr. Kamil Vaclav Zvelebil
(17-11-1927 to 17-01-2009)
BIOGRAPHY
Prof.
Zvelebil was born in
He studied at the
He read Indology, English language, literature and philosophy.
He was awarded his Ph.D in 1952 in Sanskrit, English and Philosophy.
In 1959 he obtained a second Ph.D in Dravidian philology.
Prof.
Zvelebil died in France on 17-01-2009.
From 1952 to 1970 he was a
research fellow and senior research fellow in Tamil and Dravidian linguistics
and literature at the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of
Sciences.
His many field trips included those to
He held the position of associate professor of Tamil and Dravidian at
He subsequently obtained the chair in Dravidian studies at the
In 1970 he left the
During his career he had
the oppurtunity not only to travel on his field trips but also to teach in
various cities including, Delhi, Madras, Tokyo, Philadelphia, Rochester,
Moscow, Leningrad, Uppsala and Lund.
He is the author of more
that 500 bibliographic items including books, articles, revies and
translations.
Translations include those
of ancient and modern poetry and prose from Sanskrit, Tamil, Malayam, Kannada
and Telugu into Czech, Slovak, English and German. (see books).
Works cover the fields of descriptive and historical Tamil linguistics and
dialectology, Tamil literature, Tamil Prosody, Dravidian comparative
linguistics, Tribal languages and cultures of the Nilgiries (South India: in
partucular Irula - described for the first time by Zvelebil), South Indian
cultural and religious history, Hinduism, Sanskrit ritual texts, comparative
Sanskrit and Tamil literature, Tamil Folklore Tamil Siddha movement.
Prof. Zvelebil was a
memeber of many sociaties including associations of the Czech Union of Writes,
Hon. Fellow Sahitya akademy (National Academy of Letters, India).
Kamil V. Zvelebil married
in 1951 and had three children:
Dr.
Marek Zvelebil (1952)
Katerina Zvelebilova
(1953)
Dr.
Marketa J. Zvelebil (1960)
Prof. Zvelebil retired
(although he continued to work on many texts and books) and lived in France
with his wife Dr. Nina Zvelebil. He died after a long battle with Cancer on 17th
of January 2009. He will be greatly missed by family, friends, colleagues,
students and people he touched through his writing. Below are some comments
written after his death.
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Vele herinneringen. De discussies over de meest uiteenlopende onderwerpen aan de eettafel in Cabrespine zijn me het meest bijgebleven. Kamil aan het hoofd van de tafel. Veel sterkte met het verlies en heb vertrouwen in elkaar en in de toekomst. |
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Ellis Hensen (Amsterdam) |
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20 January 2009 |
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The good memories of his enthusiastic conversations and joie de vivre will remain. He was quite literally a gentleman and a scholar. Our sympathy to his family at this time, |
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Jerry & Hilary ( |
Professor Kamil Zvelebil, one of the greatest modern
Western scholars of Tamil literature, passed away on 17 January 2009.
It is impossible to overstate Professor Zvelebil's
contribution to the understanding of Tamil literature, particularly in the
west, but also amongst ourselves. It's difficult to describe just how
differently Tamil literature was viewed by mainstream academics before
Professor Zvelebil began writing on the topic. In 1955, when Nilakantha Sastry,
in his History of South India, said that Sanskrit was "the magic wand
whose touch alone raised each of the Dravidian languages from the level of a
patois to that of a literary idiom", most of his readers agreed with him.
Today, almost every serious researcher accepts that Nilakantha Sastry was
totally wrong - Tamil was an exception and had its own tradition. And that is
very largely thanks to Professor Zvelebil's work.
Professor Zvelebil demonstrated much of what we today take
for granted, that Tamil literature was, genuinely, a national literature, in
the same way that French or German literature was, with its own special
characteristics, forms and approaches. He, too, was responsible for winning
mainstream acceptance in the West for the early dating of Sangam literature -
which, until then, was most commonly dated to the 8th or 9th centuries AD,
following Robert Caldwell and Burnell.
Professor Zvelebil also demonstrated the unity that ran
through Tamil literature. Until his time, it was common to divide Tamil
literature into discrete periods - the Sangam period, the post-Sangam period,
the didactic period, the epic period and so on. Professor Zvelebil showed how,
instead, common threads ran through genres of Tamil literature - whether
single stanzas, "short poetical works" (ciRRilakkiyam), epics or
devotional poetry - across the entire history of Tamil literature.
And, in terms of sheer breadth of scholarship, his Lexicon
of Tamil Literature will remain the standard reference work for concepts,
work a nd authors in Tamil literature for the foreseeable future.
An epoch has come to an end with his passing.
Podalangai
It is very sad information. I had a chance to
meet him only after the fall of Iron curtain in my country. Once it was in
Prague at Charles University, second in Wassenaar where he lived till his
retirement at the Utrecht University and transfer for Languedoc.
He was an excellent scholar and great man, one of the best specialists in
Dravidian linguistics at all.
I am very sad.
Vaclav
A pioneer in Dravidian studies, prof. Kamil V.
Zvelebil is no more. He died on 17th of January 2009, according to the mail I
received from Dr. Mu. Elangovan, prof. of Tamil, Pondichery and Dr. Robert
Zydenbos, KVZ's former student, now in Munich.
Dravidology is a term coined by
Zvelebil, and he will sadly be missed
by academics specializing in Dravidian linguistics, South Indian history and so on. Here is my note announcing
KVZ's passing away. http://nganesan.blogspot.com/2009/01/zvelebil.html
N. Ganesan
The sad news included below has appeared today
on the MinTamil list.
Professor Zvelebil was certainly
the greatest non-Tamil specialist of Tamil literature in the 20th century
We are extremely sorry to hear the passing away of Prof. Kamil Zvelebil. As you
have rightly said, he was "the greatest non-Tamil Specialist of Tamil
Literature of the 20th Century".
His "Lexicon of Tamil
Literature" is a monumental piece of reference work in cataloging the rich
literary contributions of Tamil over many centuries. I refer to it often to
know who wrote what and when. In
all monographs on the history of Tamil literature often mention made in vague
terms of "so and so wrote x number of works" without any specifics.
It was his pure love for Tamil Language and Literature that drove Prof. Kamil
to spend years and years of careful
search and cataloguing earlier contributions.
For us with interests in digital
preservation of Tamil Heritage Materials, Prof.Kamil's monograph is the best
gift we can get. Please convey our sincere condolences to his family.
anbudan
Kalyan
Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram,
Project Leader, Project Madurai
http://www.projectmadurai.org