Raimon Panikkar

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Raimon Panikkar (born Raimundo Pániker Alemany on November 3, 1918) is one of the most prestigious proponents of interreligious dialogue. He is a Roman Catholic priest and a scholar specialized in Comparative Philosophy of Religion

[edit] Biography

Raimon Panikkar was born on November 3, 1918 in Barcelona, Catalonia, as son of a Catholic Catalan and a Hindu Indian. His mother was a well educated daughter of the Catalan bourgeoisie; his father derived from a high Nair(the warrior /kshtriya clan)Malabar caste from South India(he was a freedom fighter and during british coloniel rule in india ,and escaped from briton and married from a catalan lord family), had studied in England and was the representant of a German chemical company in Barcelona. Educated by a Jesuit school, Panikkar studied Chemistry and Philosophy at the universities of Barcelona, Bonn and Madrid, and Catholic Theology in Madrid and Rome. He holds three doctorates in Philosophy (1945), Science (1958, both at Complutense University of Madrid) and Theology (1961, Pontifical Lateran University in Rome), and was professor of the Complutense University of Madrid (1946-53). He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1946. In 1953, he left Europe for India where he undertook studies in Indian philosophy and religion at the universities of Mysore and Varanasi and engaged in the Hindu-Christian dialogue, with a short time as professor in Rome (1962-63). From 1967-71, he held a professorship at Harvard University, and from 1971-78 he was professor for Religious Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. Currently he lives in Tavertet, in the mountains of Catalonia, outside Barcelona. Panikkar has written some 40 books and more than 900 articles.

[edit] Works

The Vedic Experience: Mantramañjari: An Anthology Of The Vedas For Modern Man. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
'Aporias in the comparative philosophy of religion', Man and World, vol 13, 1980, pp. 357-83.
The Unknown Christ Of Hinduism: Towards An Ecumenical Christophany. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1981.