The J. Gonda Fund

The J. Gonda Fund supports the scholarly study of Sanskrit, other classical Indian languages and literature, and Indian cultural history. The Fund is named after Jan Gonda (1905–1991), one of the world’s most eminent scholars in South Asian and Indonesian studies, who was affiliated with Utrecht University and left behind a bibliography of more than 700 scholarly publications.

Following his death, he bequeathed a substantial sum to the KNAW, which led to the establishment of the Gonda Fund in 1992. Since then, the Fund has supported projects, fellowships, and scholarly publications, and organises the annual Gonda Lecture. The Fund offers postdoctoral fellowships to promising young Indologists, and supports PhD students and researchers working across the broad field of classical Indian studies.