Prof. Dr. Jozef Albert Cornelius Deleu

Lifetime

Born: 1925, Alveringem
Passed away: 1994

About

Jozef Albert Cornelius Deleu was born in 1925 in Alveringem (Belgium). In 1948 he completed his degree in Germanic Philology at Rijksuniversiteit Gent, where the lectures of Prof. Dr. W. Convreur and some minor courses in Sanskrit and Tocharian already led him to a new field of study.

During the following years he acted as a teacher of Dutch and English and continued his Sanskrit studies. In 1957 he obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Letters with a dissertation on Rājaśekhara's Prabandhakośa and became a Research Fellow of the National Foundation for Scientific Research at the University of Gent.

In 1959 he was reading Prākrit with the late Prof. Schubring and Prof. Alsdorf. At Schubrings's suggestion he wrote his most important book Viyāhapannatti (Bhagavaī). The fifth Aṅga of the Jaina Canon which was published in 1970.

In 1970 the State Univeristy of Utrecht (Netherlands) invited him as a guest-lecturer in Jainology, since 1981 he held a chair in Old-, Middle- and New Indian Languages at the Rijksuniversiteit Gent and became the Head of the local Department of Indology.

Jozef Deleu died in 1994.

Selected publications:

• Rājaśekharasūri's Prabandhakośa (Diss. in Dutch) Gent 1957.
• Viyāhapannatti (Bhagavaī). The fifth Aṅga of the Jaina Canon. Published by the Faculty of Letters, State University of Gent (Vol. 151), Brugge 1970.
• Chapters I-III of the Mahānisīha critically edited. Ed. together with W. Schubring's crit. ed. of chapters IV-V, in: Studien zum Mahānisīha. Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien 10, Hamburg 1963, pp. 1-168.
• Nirayāvaliyāsuyakkhandha, Uvanga's 8-12 van de jaina Canon (in Dutch), in: Orientalia Gandensia IV, Leiden 1969, pp. 77-150.