Famous Indologist Jaroslav Vacek airlifted to Prague

Kozhikode: World famous Czech Indologist Professor Jaroslav Vacek who had suffered a head injury and was in the hospital for over a month was airlifted to Prague today.

72-year-old Indologist had come to Calicut to give a lecture on 2nd January but suffered a head injury when he collapsed and since then he was in the hospital. The lecture was organised by the Calicut Universty to inaugurate the International Sanskrit Conference.

The winner of Presidential Medal for his love of classical Indian languages Sanskrit and Tamil is a renowned Indologist.

He is the director of the Institute for South and Central Asia at Charles University in Prague. He is credited to be the first person to translate the Bhagavad Gita to the Czech language.

Since the fall, he has not spoken and been in critical condition. Students and scholars all around the world have been praying for his improvement.

"He is a great scholar in the field of Indological studies. Vacek is fluent in Sanskrit and Tamil and is a mentor to several Indologists in Europe. He loved Kozhikode and we are glad that we could save his life though complete recovery would take time," said Sanskrit scholar C Rajendran who had been overseeing the professor's treatment in Kozhikode.

Vacek had gone to the city hospital to consult about fever and there he collapsed."Internal bleeding in his head necessitated an emergency brain surgery. While recuperating he developed pneumonia and was put on the ventilator," Rajendran said.