Prof. Kamil Václav Zvelebil - Czech Scholar in Indian Literature & Linguistics

Prof. Kamil Václav Zvelebil was a Czech Scholar in Indian Literature & Linguistics, notably Tamil, Sanskrit, Dravidan linguistics & literature and philology.

He was born in Prague (Czechoslovakia) on Nov 17, 1927. He studied at the Charles University, Prague from 1946 to 1952 where he majored in Indology, English Language, literature and philosophy. After obtaining his PhD in 1952 and until 1970 he was a Senior research fellow in Tamil and Dravidan linguistics and literature at the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

During the late 1960s, he made many field trips including those to South India. From 1965 to 1966, he was a temporary professor in Dravidian studies at the University of Chicago, USA and was a visiting professor of Heidelberg University between 1967 and 1968. He held the role of associate professor of Tamil and Dravidian at Charles University in Prague until 1968.

He is very well known among the scholars in Tamil Nadu and has earned a permanent place in the educational syllabus of the Dravidian states. After more travel through European universities he became the professor of Dravidian linguistics and South Indian literature and culture at Utrecht University until his retirement in 1992.

Mr. Zvelebil also made the only known translation of the Thirukkural in the Czech language. It included some selections that appeared in Novy Orient, a Czech journal, during 1952-54. He has also authored numerous books and articles on Dravidan linguistics and literarture. His Translations include those of ancient and modern poetry and prose from Sanskrit, Tamil, Malayam, Kannada and Telugu into Czech, Slovak, English and German.

Also his 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 Mr. Zvelebil), South Indian cultural and religious history, Hinduism, Sanskrit ritual texts, comparative Sanskrit and Tamil literature, Tamil Folklore Tamil Siddha movement.