Stanley Insler.

• Position: Scholar of Indic and Iranian studies - Biography

Stanley Insler was born in New York City, as he surely had to have been, for he shares the city's best characteristics: cosmopolitan, resilient, creative. This year he will celebrate his 65th birthday, and that occasion has given us, his colleagues and students, the opportunity to celebrate him and to honor his teaching and scholarship.

Professor Insler has taught much to many, but those of us who have been his Sanskrit students have received perhaps the finest share. He taught the history and structure of Sanskrit as an elaborate architecture, whose order, even if occasionally obscured by bizarre facade and eccentric ornamentation, can be understood by careful analysis. But more pointedly, he taught the principles upon which his own work is established: define the problem, collect the evidence--all the evidence--and lay it out methodically. By doing so, he assured us, the solution will emerge. Francis Bacon would have been proud, but, as we soon discovered, his scholarship has a hidden Cartesian side as well: Professor Insler's ability to envision plausible explanations and his acute linguistic and interpretive instincts have given him a noticeable advantage in carrying out this program. Likewise, as God instructed Muhammad not to anticipate but to await revelation, Professor Insler insisted that the text must lead and that we students of the text must avoid constraining its imagination by our own. Again, however, his own lively mind has given him the ability to respond to the text in especially compelling and discerning ways. Professor Insler's teaching extended well beyond the boundaries of formal philology. From him we learned also about English furniture, Weimar Germany, and aspic; about Barlach, Brideshead Revisited, and Burgundies; about the dangers of maraschino cherries and the art of cocktail piano; about William Dwight Whitney, scholar and turkey-hunter; and much else besides. Instruction in Sanskrit merged with instruction in life, for, after all, the art of good philology is the art of good thinking and our common humanity exists through a web of texts.

For the wider philological community, Professor Insler has taught through his...