J. A. B. van Buitenen

Who was J. A. B. van Buitenen?

Johannes Adrianus Bernardus van Buitenen was an Indologist at the University of Chicago where he was the George V. Bobrinskoy Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. His interests ranged widely over literature, philosophy and philology but toward the end of his career he focused primarily on the Mahābhārata.

Van Buitenen studied with Jan Gonda at the Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht. He received his doctorate, cum laude, on 23 October 1953 and immediately departed for India where he stayed until 1956. From 1959 to 1961 he was reader in Indian philosophy at Utrecht but found he had little interest in the position or in staying in the Netherlands. As a consequence he happily accept an invitation to take a position at the University of Chicago and remained there until his death in 1979 at the age of fifty-one. van Buitenen contributed to the training of several able scholars in the USA, among them James L. Fitzgerald, Walter O. Kaelber, Michael D. Willis, Bruce M. Sullivan and Bruce Lincoln.