Gonda was buitengewoon hoogleraar te Utrecht 1932-1941 en gewoon hoogleraar 1941-1976 in Sanskrit, Avestisch, Oud-Perzisch en de Beginselen der Indo-Germaanse Taalwetenschap.

Professor Jan Gonda died in Utrecht on 28 July 1991 at the age of eighty-six. He was one of the world's foremost scholars in both Old Indian and Indonesian studies. His successor to the Utrecht chair of Sanskrit, Dr. Henk Bodewitz, in the Indo-lranian Joumal (34, 1991, pp. 28 1-286) as well as in the Yearbook of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Jaarboek 1991, forthcoming), has especially commemorated him as a scholar in the Indian field. This In Memoriam wil1 be devoted mainly, though not exclusively, to Gonda as a scholar in the field of Indonesian languages and literature.