Prof. Raniero Gnoli
(January 20th 1930 – May 5th 2025)

Associazione Internazionale di Studi sul Mediterraneo e l’Oriente

Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 244, 00186 Roma
www.ismeo.eu    ismeo@ismeo.eu

With deep condolences and emotion, ISMEO announces the death, which took place on May 5, 2025 in his home in Castelgiuliano, of Professor Raniero Gnoli, one of the most authoritative Indologists of the twentieth century, ordinary member of Giuseppe Tucci’s IsMEO (later of Gherardo Gnoli), in whose Oriental Series Rome published practically all his fundamental Indological works. He has been an honorary member of ISMEO since its refoundation in 2012. Prof. Raniero Gnoli was the elder brother of Prof. Gherardo Gnoli, in turn one of the greatest Iranians of his time, who directed – after Tucci – with great energy and authority the IsMEO (1979-1995) and then the IsIAO (1995-2011) until its dissolution decreed by the Italian government due to restrictions on state funding that progressively made it impossible to carry out its institutional tasks.

Raniero Gnoli was born in Rome on January 20, 1930, into a family that has produced numerous figures of significant cultural importance. He began to take an interest in Greek literature at a very early age, and at a very young age he began the study of oriental languages (with Coptic and Sanskrit). After enrolling at La Sapienza University, Rome, the main meeting of his life as a scholar took place at that university: the one with Giuseppe Tucci, of whom he soon became his favorite disciple (he was currently the oldest of his living direct pupils). Tucci, who had long been interested in Kashmiri Śivaism, had directed Raniero Gnoli to the study of the texts of the Śivaite schools, and this was the cause of numerous study trips to Kashmir (Gnoli arrived in India for the first time at the age of 25). In the field of aesthetics (to which the lessons that Gnoli followed with Tucci in the early fifties were dedicated, cf. R. Gnoli, Ricordo di Giuseppe Tucci, Serie Orientale Roma, vol. 55, IsMEO, Rome 1985, p. 7) his The Aesthetic Experience according to Abhinavagupta (Serie Orientale Roma, vol. 11, IsMEO, Rome 1956) has remained a seminal work that is still essential today. In the same series he published the collection of all known Sanskrit inscriptions from the earliest history of Nepal (Nepalese Inscriptions in Gupta Characters, Serie Orientale Roma, IsMEO, vol. 10/2, Rome 1956), which has remained essentially his only foray into the complex field of Indian epigraphy. Starting from the 1960s, his interests turned, again through the direction of his master, towards another great Indian tradition, that of Buddhism, and in 1960 the first of his works in this field of study saw the light, the critical edition, which has remained the reference one, of the first section (Svārthānumāna) of Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika (Serie Orientale Roma, IsMEO, vol. 23, Rome 1960).

The final stretch of the scholar’s university teaching, with the collaboration above all of his Roman students, was dedicated to the Sanskrit and Tibetan tradition of the Buddhist tantric cycle of the Kālacakra (see, for example, the critical edition of the Tibetan translation of the Sekoddeśa, edited by Giacomella Orofino and Alex Wayman, vol. 72 of the Serie Orientale Roma, IsIAO, Rome 1996, and the critical edition of the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts of Nāropā's Sekoddeśaṭīkā, edited by Stefania Merzagora and Francesco Sferra, vol. 99 of the Serie Orientale Roma, IsIAO, Rome 2006).

A moving contribution, due to his filial devotion as a student, is constituted by the small volume he edited a year after the death of his master Ricordo di Giuseppe Tucci (vol. 55 of the Serie Orientale Roma, IsMEO, Rome 1985).

His work as a popularizer of the highest level is due, among other things, to the two volumes of the Meridiani dedicated to the Revelation of the Buddha (Arnoldo Mondadori, Milan 2001 and 2004, over 3000 pages in total, written with the collaboration of numerous students and colleagues), Bhagavadgītā. Il canto del beato (UTET, Torino 1976) and, in a completely different field, the result of his parallel artistic passions cultivated since childhood, but in any case derived from decades of careful research intensified in the 1960s, the volume Marmora Romana (1971), a detailed study of the most diverse stones resulting from the numerous voyages made between the 1950s and 1960s in Italy, the Middle East and North Africa, published for the first time in 1971 in the edition of the Elephant and recently reprinted by the Nave di Teseo.