Jozef Deleu (1925-1994)

A great philologist, a poet, a soft-spoken music aficionado. But most of all: my revered teacher.

Born in Alveringem, in the Westhoek, the westernmost corner of the province of West Flanders (Belgium) and the area of my own ancestral roots, Deleu moved on to study Sanskrit (with Adriaan Scharpe) and Tokharian (with Walter Couvreur) at Ghent University (1944-1948), later moving on to the Seminar für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens at Hamburg, where he read Ardhamagadhi with Professor Ludwig Alsdorf and further specialised in Jain Studies with Professor Walther Schubring - joining Ghent University as a professor from 1964 onwards.

For four consecutive years Deleu was my teacher - most of the time in one-on-ones, when we would be discussing literally everything, from the music of JS Bach to farming in the Yser Valley to birdwatching to the Jain doctrine of ahimsa and the advantages of the institute of joint family and arranged marriages in India. Although Deleu was first and foremost an expert in Jain Studies, we started by reading Hindi (Premcand, Upendranath Ashk, Yashphal, but above all: Nirala!) and Sanskrit (Dandin's Dashakumaracarita, Shudraka's Mricchakathika, Somadeva's Kathasaritsagara, Kalidasa), proceeding later to the more difficult challenges of the Ardhamagadhi and Shauraseni languages of Jain literature. But whatever our subject, Professor Deleu remained as inspired and inspiring as ever, gently sharing with his student his passionate love-affair with language, poetry, and life.

Particularly when it came to Kalidasa, reading Meghaduta and Shakuntala (of which he had just published his own Dutch translation), Deleu's poetic genius would come to the surface. I remember how he would stand up, inhale deep from his self-rolled cigarette, walk over to the window and chant the heart-felt sorrows of Shakuntala when she discovers that her lover prince fails to recognize her - tears on his cheeks, his gaze forlorn, somewhere beyond the clouds, as if he was a Meghaduta, a Cloud Messenger in person.

Here again was someone who was crossing all cultural borders, even from within his seat and hidden behind his towers of books and papers covered in tobacco dust and cigarette ash. Here again was someone who, in all his stories, proved that humanity is merely an intercultural continuum, that there is no us versus them, but that deep inside, every human soul, from whichever place on the globe, will be moved by the same values, emotions and feelings.

Links:

Deleu at the Belgian Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences - Kalidasa - Jain Studies

- Francis Laleman -