Johannes Gijsbertus de Casparis (31 May 1916, Eemnes – 19 June 2002, Wassenaar) was a Dutch orientalist and indologist.
Early years
After attending Barlaeus Gymnasium in Amsterdam, De Casparis started piano study at the conservatory of Amsterdam. However, a year later, in 1934, he turned to classical languages with Russian as a minor at the University of Amsterdam. Barend Faddegon was teaching Sanskrit in Amsterdam and under his influence, de Casparis switched to Sanskrit. In 1935, the archaeologist Willem Frederik Stutterheim of the Oudheidkundige Dienst in Nederlandsch-Indië (Archaeological Service in the Netherlands Indies) gave a lecture at the University of Amsterdam at which time he advised de Casparis to transfer to Leiden to continue his studies because the Oudheidkundige Dienst was looking for an epigrapher to replace Roelof Goris. Accordingly, de Casparis registered for Indology at the University of Leiden in 1936. He excelled as a student and quickly passed his examinations in Sanskrit (with Jean Philippe Vogel), Avestan (with J. H. Kramers), archaeology and ancient history (with N. J. Krom), Old Javanese (with Cornelis Christiaan Berg), and Malay (with Ph. S. van Ronkel). Moreover, he forged lifelong friendship with Raghu Vira, Durga Prashad Pandey and Senarath Paranavitana. de Casparis was appointed as Vogel's assistant and in 1939, at the age of 23, graduated. His thesis presented a new interpretation of the Sanskrit inscription of Dinoyo of CE 760.
Indonesia and the Second World War
On 3 August 1939 De Casparis was appointed epigrapher to the Oudheidkundige Dienst in Batavia. Arriving at the Netherlands Indies, De Casparis was welcomed by Stutterheim and with him toured through Central Java and East Java. After ten months at the Oudheidkundige Dienst in Batavia, however, his position was abruptly terminated. With the imperial Japanese threat, he was called up on 2 July 1940 to serve as a cryptographer in the Dutch colonial army (KNIL) and in the same year Louis-Charles Damais succeeded him as acting epigrapher. In early 1942, the Japanese invaded the Indonesian archipelago and De Casparis was taken prisoner, labouring on the Burmese railway. Together with H. R. van Heekeren, P. Voorhoeve, Chris Hooykaas, his close friend the Sinologist Marius van der Valk, and the Dutch entertainer Wim Kan, he survived the labour camps. By the end of the war De Casparis was fluent in Japanese. For a year after the Japanese surrender, he travelled through Thailand and visited archaeological sites. He stayed in Kanchanaburi, and learned Thai, and studied the inscriptions of Ram Kamhaeng. In August 1946, De Casparis returned to the Netherlands as a second lieutenant in the air force. At this time, some seven years after first meeting his future wife in France while en route to Batativa, he married Gisèle Marie Fongaro, an Italian-born Frenchwoman.
Return to Indonesia
The Renville Agreement paved the way for de Casparis's return to the archipelago in 1948 and a year later, his wife and young daughter Anna (born 1947) followed him to Jakarta. Damais was reappointed acting epigrapher in 1945, but in September 1947 he returned to France. As of November 1947, August Johan Bernet Kempers headed the Oudheidkundige Dienst and on 17 April 1948, De Casparis again took up his post as epigrapher. On 14 November he defended his PhD thesis on the inscriptions from the Śailendra period at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. Politically committed to Indonesia's struggle for independence, De Casparis met Sukarno, who showed an interest in archaeology and had established an independent Republican archaeological service (Dinas Purbakala) in Yogyakarta. In 1950, this replaced the Oudheidkundige Dienst. Meanwhile, the Oudheidkundige Dienst had started training Indonesians; R. Soekmono studied with Bernet Kempers who promptly made Soekmono his successor in 1953 after the latter's graduation. Boechari became de Casparis's student in epigraphy. In 1955, de Casparis became professor in the early history of Indonesia and Sanskrit at a branch of Airlangga University (Surabaya) in Malang. In the same year he also gave courses as visiting professor of the history of South and Southeast Asia at Universitas Adityawarman, founded by Mohammad Yamin in Batusangkar, Sumatra. Because of these duties de Casparis stayed in Jakarta for another year before moving to Malang with his family.