This book, celebrating the academic career and fine scholarship of professor Noel Quinton King, begins with some glimpses into his life by close colleagues and students, and then divides into sections and chapters reflecting his manifold interests. His areas of research have been shared and developed by many of his old students, fellow teachers and friends over the years; so that the editors found no difficulty at all in drawing together contributions that relate to his opus and suitably honour it. Noel Quinton King has combined rare talents as a great scholar with a lively spirit to inspire a generation of younger academicians around the globe. He has coupled brilliance with witty panache, extraordinary breadth of knowledge with a humane, sympathetic attention to other people’s needs, and critical acumen in his research with a wisdom to relish the joys and challenges of everyday life. His last appointment tells so much of these qualities. He held a prestigious chair in History and comparative Religion at the University of California, Santa Cru, to our knowledge a dual position unique in the academy. To packed lecture theatres, he appealed not only as a magister of his twin disciplines, but storyteller and adviser about life’s big issues, even a substitute father figure to fatherless Americans. His Anglo-Indian background very much reflected in the later, American yeas of his career, with his bushy beard and unruly shock of grey hair leaving the magical impression of a guru. And guru he has been to many, as teacher and sage, and this book serves as but an inadequate token of thanks for his excellent teaching, his transparent sharing of research findings, generous patronage of younger scholars, and his gifts as mentor.
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