Paul Thieme was a scholar of Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the oldest preserved Iranian language...

. He received his doctorate in Indology

Indology

Indology is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent , and as such is a subset of Asian studies....

 in 1928 in Göttingen

Göttingen

Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...

, and habilitated there in 1932. From 1932 to 1935 he taught German and French at the University of Allahabad

Allahabad

Allahabad , or Settled by God in Persian, is a major city of India and is one of the main holy cities of Hinduism. It was renamed by the Mughals from the ancient name of Prayaga , and is by some accounts the second-oldest city in India. It is located in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh,...

. He taught at Breslau from 1936 to 1940, and reveived tenure at Halle in 1941, but in the same year he was drafted to the German army, where he worked as an interpreter. In 1945, he was captured by U.S. troops in Württemberg

Württemberg

Württemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia....

. After his release in 1946, he returned to Halle, where he remained until 1953, when he moved to Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 for a professorship in Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...

, against the will of the GDR authorities. From 1954 to 1960 he was in Yale

YALE

RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...

, and from 1960 to his retirement in 1972 in Tübingen

Tübingen

Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

 as professor for Religious studies

Religious studies

Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...

 and Indology.

Thieme is considered one of the "last great Indologists", advancing all aspects of the philology of Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

, with expertise reaching from the Vedas

Vedas

The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....

 to the Epics and the Upanishad

Upanishad

The Upanishads are philosophical texts considered to be an early source of Hindu religion. More than 200 are known, of which the first dozen or so, the oldest and most important, are variously referred to as the principal, main or old Upanishads...

s, Sanskrit poetry and traditional Hindu science (shastra

Shastra

' is a Sanskrit term used to denote rules in a general sense. The word is generally used as a suffix in the context of technical or specialized knowledge in a defined area of practice; e.g., Bhautika Shastra , Rasayana Shastra , Jeeva Shastra , Vastu Shastra , Shilpa Shastra , Artha Shastra ' is a...

), and Indian grammarians (Panini and his commentators). Thieme was also a comparative linguist

Comparative linguistics

Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....

, studying Iranian

Iranian languages

The Iranian languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn is a subgroup of Indo-European language family. They have been and are spoken by Iranian peoples....

 and Indo-European languages in general. Thieme was fluent in Sanskrit, and therefore respected among traditional Indian scholars, holding the inauguration speech at the first World Sanskrit Conference in Delhi

Delhi

Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

 in 1971-1972.

Selected bibliography

• 1929: Das Plusquamperfektum im Veda (Diss. Göttingen 1928).
• 1935: Panini and the Veda. Studies in the Early History of Linguistic Science in India. Allahabad
• 1938: Der Fremdling im Rigveda. Eine Studie über die Bedeutung der Worte ari, arya, aryaman und aarya, Leipzig.

External links

• http://www.indologie.uni-halle.de/instgesch/th.htm