Ludwik Sternbach Explained

Ludwik Sternbach (12 December 1909 – 25 March 1981) was a lawyer, United Nations officer, and Indologist.

Early life

Sternbach was born in the Polish city of Kraków to Jewish parents: the lawyer Dr Edward Sternbach and his wife Clara (née Amster).[1]

Sternbach studied Sanskrit in parallel to training as a lawyer. In 1927 he matriculated at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, graduating as a magister juris in 1931. He proceeded to take an LL.D. in 1933, and also qualified in commercial law and statistics. From 1936 to 1939 he practiced law as an advocate, and on account of his prodigious linguistic skills was the official court's translator for Spanish, Italian, German, French, and English.

Meanwhile, he studied Sanskrit with Professor Helena Willman-Grabowska in the Jagiellonian University's seminar for Sanskritology and Indian Philology, beginning in 1928 and graduating with an M.Ph. in Sanskrit and Indology. He also worked as Grabowska's assistant while practicing as a lawyer.

Second World War

The Nazi occupation of Western Poland led the Jewish Sternbach to flee to Lwów in the east of the country, where he joined the University of Jan Kazimierz Oriental Institute as a lecturer in ancient Indian culture, under Professor Stefan Stasiak. The Russian occupation of Eastern Poland led to the Soviet authorities cancelling Sternbach's position, and in 1941 he fled, along with his parents and his research notes, travelling through Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, to Karachi and thence to Bombay. The Polish embassy there helped Sternbach find work in the Indian Army's Indian Censorship Organisation, where he worked in a civilian capacity from 1941 to 1945.

While in India, Sternbach came to the notice of Prefessor R. N. Dandekar and Dr K. M. Munshi, which led to Sternbach receiving the position of honorary professor at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and a teacher at the University of Bombay in 1944. He visited and gave academic papers in Panjab, Andhra, Annamalai, Mysore and Utkal, amongst others, and undertook research at the Kerala University Research Institute and the Manuscripts Library in Trivandrum.

Post-war career

Sternbach left India in 1946. In 1947, he began working for the United Nations, beginning in its Department of Trusteeship and Non-Self-Governing Territories, and retiring from a position as its Deputy Director of Research in 1969. He became Professor of Hindu Law and Indology at the University of Paris (1970–72) and the Collège de France, Paris (1972–76). In 1976, he retired again, but remained active in academia: he was secretary general of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies and of the World Sanskrit Conference from their foundation until his death, and a member of the Institute of Indian Civilization of the Collège de France.

Sternbach was the honorand of one Festschrift in 1979 (and which contains further biographical information),[2] and, following his death, another in 1981.[3]

Works

A complete list of Sternbach's publications up to that time appears in his 1979 Festschrift. Sternbach's books include:

Notes and References

  1. K. V. Sarma, 'Professor Ludwik Sternbach [1909-1981]', Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 63 (1982), 379-82.
  2. Ludwik Sternbach abhinandan-grantha = Ludwik Sternbach felicitation volume, ed. by J. P. Sinha, 2 vols (Lucknow: Akhila Bharatiya Sanskrit Parishad, 1979).
  3. Dr. Ludwik Sternbach commemoration volume, ed. by Stefano Piano (Torino: Edizioni Jollygrafica, [1981]).

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